


too many cooks

by uumiho



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aromantic Character, Biting, Blood Drinking, Bondage, Cuddling, D/s, F/F, Future Fic, Group Sex, Horn Stimulation, Moresomes, Multi, Polyamory, Roleplay, Shower Sex, Slice of Life, Spanking, Vibrators, communal living
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:25:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumiho/pseuds/uumiho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which five eccentric girls, all of whom are very fond of each other, reminisce on their shared childhood experiences while being very liberal about kissing their housemates. Among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rose ;

**Author's Note:**

  * For [argentConflagration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentConflagration/gifts).



> Full disclosure: These tags make the fic look way more exciting than it actually is. Unfortunately there are no tags for "five girls being absolute goobers," so you'll have to settle for a rough run-down of the kinks that will appear through this work, because literally nothing else is significant enough to tag. I'm sorry.
> 
> Also? Holy shit getting all of the relationships were difficult. Fivesomes are hard, especially when divvied up into little corners of ship triangles and quadrangles and... angles. 
> 
> Anyway, hi! Welcome to my lair, also known as the Den Of Going Completely Overboard. Within you will find five (5) complete, stand-alone one-shots, that all happen to exist in the same setting, based on the same prompt. It's not a chaptered fic and has no chronology set in stone, other than the order in which the chapters are posted is the order I thought it best to read them in. Feel free to rebel and do it backwards, or roll a die and skip around randomly.
> 
> If you're curious about body types that will be used in this fic, I made a [really handy graphic](http://i.imgur.com/57REm0I.png) for height and weight references.
> 
> My one goal in this series was to never mention a male character by name even once. I don't remember if I succeeded, but I tried pretty hard. Hope you enjoy.

It’s late-morning when you rise, edging shamefully close to afternoon but just far enough from it that you can still maintain your dignified place as “not the latest sleeper in the house.” Even if Jade makes it to the kitchen before you, you can just argue that you were in your bathroom, putting on your make-up, and had actually been up for hours. Pay no attention to the fact that, if this is going to succeed, you don’t actually have time to put on make-up.

Perhaps you could turn on the shower and let it run while you select the day’s outfit, dash under the water just long enough to get convincingly wet, and then towel off and dress immediately after, thus creating the illusion that you were showering the entire time, explaining your lateness.

You think, more than likely, that’s taking it a bit too far, and settle for brushing your teeth and washing your hair in the sink.

Soft music filters into the bathroom from underneath the closed door separating you from Kanaya’s room. Although these living arrangements were _quite_ conditional on you both having your own spaces, and although Kanaya abhors your unique brand of environmental chaos, at the very least she knows how to _deal_ with your unfortunate slovenliness more than she would any of your other housemates. You don’t doubt that after one too many evenings coming home to filth covering the shower and/or sink and/or toilet lid and/or bath mat, Kanaya would have a spectacular meltdown the likes of which would rend your quaint little complex into an unidentifiable mound of sawdust. Even if Terezi hadn’t already claimed the drafty attic apartment, you know for a fact that she draws on her bathroom mirror with lipstick (for obvious reasons, but).

That you and Kanaya were assigned to one of the two suites the house had to offer was not particularly shocking. You weren’t entirely keen on experiencing any of Jade or Aradia’s dirt parties, either. To this day you’ve never seen the inside of their bathroom, and you never hope to.

You _do_ tiptoe over and knock lightly on Kanaya’s door. The music continues to play, but you hear no movement. She must have vacated her room already.

Drat.

A towel ruffles your hair dry, and you smooth it down again with a brush that holds the traces of hair much darker than your own. You honestly don’t remember if it was originally Kanaya’s or yours; it’s too late now, in any case. Blonde and black have already begun their unholy intermingling and it’d be cruel to tear such a gloriously blasphemous union apart. You keep your toothbrush in a cup on your dresser, just in case.

The pleasant background music provided by Kanaya’s empty bedroom is drowned out when a loud voice blasts through the house, screeching away the gentle morning atmosphere. It sounds like Christina Aguilera. Terezi must have commandeered the stereo.

You slide on a pastel pink house dress and, for some unfathomable reason, prepare to climb headfirst into the din.

Your bedroom door swings open. Christina Aguilera’s dulcet tones abruptly cease. You’re guessing Kanaya had some influence over that, though you can’t be certain. You’re greeted by the delicious smell of Jade’s cooking—and you know it’s Jade’s because Aradia is fond of the sound of smoke alarms and nothing cooked by Kanaya or Terezi has ever been something you’d describe as ‘delicious.’ Terezi’s getting better at not adding a cupful of sugar to everything she makes, but you haven’t yet been able to impress upon Kanaya that ‘raw only’ diets are best left to vegans.

You put on your gameface, because your housemates can be Intense in the mornings (at all times, really), and they will pounce on weakness like a flock of kittens regarding an unsuspecting mouse toy. You have greater aspirations than ending up stuffed with catnip, so you endeavor not to let them get the upper hand.

High, mischievous laughter floats down the hallway, foreshadowing a premature encounter with one of your companions. You quickly assess the situation. Kanaya's voice is low and mellow, and while Jade's voice is a higher register it goes down when she laughs—opposite of Aradia, whose deeper tones escalate into a riotous explosion of sound whenever something is even moderately funny. (Terezi's pitchy, shrieking cackle is a class all its own.) Your deductions are sound enough that you aren't surprised when Aradia lurches around the corner, her teeth displayed by plush black lips, parted in a broad smile.

She didn't do her make-up, either. Ha.

“Rose!” she says, immediately bouncing to your side, both metaphorically and physically. As a wise man once said, 'red beans and rice didn't miss her,' and Aradia's paper thin button-up is doing an admirably terrible job of containing her full chest. That it's only secured by, what, three? buttons probably doesn't help.

Living in a bizarre polyamorous lesbian sex commune does seem to have its perks. But you already knew that.

Aradia is about an inch shorter than you, so her ample breasts slot nicely beneath yours when she crushes you in an enthusiastic hug. You don't betray yourself with your smile, though something about sunrise always makes you a little frisky. “Was that a cat being swung around by its tail I heard a minute ago?” you ask, keeping your hands by your sides.

She giggles. “Jade didn't check to see who had last used the stereo before turning it on, and guess who was working at home alone yesterday!”

Ah, yes. Terezi's weird obsession for multilingual pop music played at incomprehensible levels strikes again. She claims it helps her focus, but you suspect it's just a really elaborate ruse that she's learned to live with because she's too dedicated to admit it's a joke. “Is our common room still in one piece?”

“She turned it off before Kanaya made her opinion known, if that's what you mean.”

You snort. “Of course. We owe our lives to Jade's quick reflexes.” You’re mostly joking. You don’t actually think Kanaya would break the stereo just because she hates Terezi’s music. Probably. She’s broken things for far less. “Have you eaten already?” you enquire, eyes flicking down the hallway in askance.

“A little bit,” Aradia says, pulling away from you (unfortunately) and looking away, her carefree smile still plastered on her face. She never really got back into the whole ‘eating’ thing, after returning to life. You don’t entirely blame her, but Kanaya and Terezi worry so you try to encourage where you can. “But I have to get dressed now. Spending the day in your pajamas kills your sense of adventure!”

“I disagree,” you say, smoothing your hands over the fabric of your house dress. “Adventure can be had in many ways.”

“You never leave the house,” laughs Aradia.

“Lies.” You do so leave the house, at least once every week for groceries. Sometimes you write better when sitting in a pretentious little cafe, but it’s not _your_ fault that Kanaya and Jade have cultivated the perfect inspirational greenroom. You just have very little need for the world outside your home, is all.

You listen to the sweeping escalation of Aradia’s laughter, graciously accepting when she swoops in to kiss your cheek. “Whatever you say, Rose!” she allows, before breaking away to cross the hall to her door, nearly adjacent from yours. “Have fun at breakfast.”

You’re sure you will.

It never fails to amaze you, the chemical reaction that is Jade and Terezi. They didn’t talk that much during the game, so you never really expected it. That’ll teach you to underestimate them. You endeavored to not repeat the mistake again, which is why you are only a little surprised to see Terezi in nothing but an incredibly spankable pair of red boyshorts and standing with one foot on her chair and the other propped on the table, while Jade pitches what looks like small pieces of bacon at her from across the room.

Ah, yes. Home sweet home. You make eye contact with Kanaya, who’s sitting balled up in an armchair, sipping coffee and watching the scene with what you estimate to be equal amounts exasperation and bemusement.

You float past the scene, helping yourself to a sausage on the way to the fruit basket. You got Kanaya an entire bag of blood oranges last week, as a joke.

Selecting one, you begin to cut it into segments, keeping peripheral awareness of the bacon antics, just in case either of them should misfire—or worse, get any ill advised _ideas_. “That’s not even fair!” Jade complains, though you detect the presence of a laugh in her voice. “I wasn’t even _aiming_ for your mouth and you _still_ caught it. You’re not supposed to be able to see, you cheater!”

Terezi is hanging from the ceiling light. Fortunately she weighs about as much as a wet newspaper, but if that thing comes loose, she’s paying to replace it. You chew your sausage thoughtfully as Terezi swings the whole unit like a pendulum, launching herself back within range of the table. You take care not to cut your fingers with the knife due to your inability to look away. It’s far more interesting than the average train wreck, because at least in a train wreck you have a general idea of what’s going to happen. This could go anywhere.

“Hey, whoa!” Jade’s fingers wrap around your knife-holding hand seconds before you miscalculate the distance between your palm and the tip of the blade.

By your estimation, it wouldn’t have taken off any of your fingers, but it might have demanded a few stitches. It’s not really the most visible of mistakes, but you don’t need to ask how Jade knew the exact distance between your flesh and the implement. “Hi,” you say, seemingly unperturbed.

“Hi yourself, Rose!” She’s warm against your back. You’re okay with this. “Lose some sleep?” she asks.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you almost cut your whole hand off there!” Jade exclaims, gesturing with the hand she’s still holding, despite that one having never been in any danger.

You smile. “Oh, give yourself some credit. I don’t have to be sleep deprived to find your breakfast sport absolutely fascinating. Maybe I was just testing to see if you were paying attention.” Jade rolls her eyes so grandly that you sense it even with her behind you.

“Of course,” she says, releasing your wrist. You don’t want her to go, but you allow it anyway. “That _totally_ makes sense!”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Terezi has resumed an intimate relationship with the kitchen floor, much to the table’s relief. You make a mental note to clean it before lunch.

“There’s no way she could have guaranteed I would notice!” Jade protests. “Rose is definitely not weird enough to cut off her own hand in a passive aggressive demand for attention.”

“Excuse me,” you interject. “It wasn’t my _entire_ hand. Maybe half. Depends on my mood.”

“I don’t think you can support that argument in a court of law,” Terezi says to Jade, after throwing you a smirk. “Miss Lavender Lalonde would cut off her own snout to spite her face if the sun so much as dared sit in the sky in a manner she found offensive. There's not a jury in existence that could be convinced otherwise.”

You hum. “Maybe that’s going a bit far? I find my own nose rather endearing.”

Terezi considers it. “Someone else’s nose, then. After they’ve undergone an elaborate surgical reconstruction that replicates your appearance so closely that your own lusus wouldn’t notice the difference.”

“I’ll allow it.” This is normally where you’d make a joke about your mother's habit of being too drunk to distinguish between you and the bronzed vacuum, but memories of your guardian’s teenage doppelganger stop you, as they usually do when you care to think that far back into your past. (It happens much more often than you like to admit; remembering.)

Jade gnaws on a banana, wrinkling her nose. “You really should be careful, though,” she says, letting the discarded peel dangle from her fingers. It’s endearingly gross how she holds the naked fruit in her hand without seeming to notice that her snack came with a perfectly adequate handle already installed with the purpose of easy, mess-free consumption. “I don’t think typing with a handful of stitches is the best supplement for creativity.” She waggles the half eaten banana at you. Precious.

You open your mouth to shoot something back, but Terezi intercepts. “I bet I could win a case arguing that if anyone was to get off on using their own superficial physical pain as inspiration, it would be Rose. I’d put money on it, even.”

“Oh my god, stop being a butt!” Jade exclaims, lobbing the banana peel at the spindly troll.

Laughing at them is comfortable and familiar, but you tune out of their antics long enough to avoid repeating the self-maiming scare, finishing your dissection without any further drama.

You load the slices of (fortunately) non-literal blood orange onto a slim glass plate and slip through the wide threshold between the kitchen and the sitting room. Kanaya is much more intent on her coffee now that the chaos has died down, her eyelids drooping and knees still tucked in close to her chest. She doesn’t react to the sound of the plate on the side table, doesn’t stir at all until you dip to press a kiss to the wisps of her bangs, disorderly on her brow. Kanaya sleeps about as much as Aradia eats, but waking up is always a chore. You’ve postulated a number of reasons for this, up to and including the difference between whatever nutrients she’d be afforded by the Alternian sun versus what Earth has to offer, but have thusfar failed to settle on anything concrete.

She sleeps less, and feeds more. It’s a workable solution.

“Good morning,” you greet. Kanaya makes a sound that might have been reciprocation, but holds an equal chance of meaning ‘I have no patience for this right now,’ much like when the neighbor dog hops the fence and digs in her flowers—although you’re quite certain that Kanaya would never dispose of you and make it look like an accident. “You’ll be pleased to hear that I did not dismember myself while making your breakfast.”

Her eyes shift under the heavy lids, glancing at your humble offering. “Ah,” she says dryly. You don’t expect her to have eaten already, because Kanaya likes raw but she abhors greasy, which tends to put her at odds with most fried food.

Kanaya doesn’t move. You roll your eyes. Love is pain, and all that. You pick up a wedge with one hand and remove her coffee cup with the other, presenting the fruit. “Come on,” you say, ignoring her glare. “Don’t force me to make any ill advised locomotive references. I don’t know if I can resist the temptation.”

“Don’t,” says Kanaya. She might have laughed that one time Jade made ‘choo choo’ noises at Aradia, but she made it clear to you that if you ever tried anything like that with her, it would be... unwelcome. You press the orange between her thin black lips, watching her sharp fangs sink into the pulpy flesh. A freckle of juice squirts from the rind and lands on your upper lip; distracted, you lick it away, admiring the wet shine around Kanaya’s mouth.

Boy, but you do get randy in the mornings.

She feeds herself after that, sipping her coffee in between bites. You flip through a magazine, settled on the floor with one of her feet propped against your shoulder, the knob of her ankle stabbing you in the ear.

Eventually her hand comes down to thread through the fluffy strands of your drying hair, and her legs unfold like the pinschers of a praying mantis, stretching out beside you. “I see you’ve returned to the world of the living,” you quip.

“In a manner of speaking,” Kanaya says, and stands. She is long and narrow and elegant, agile like a predator. You fancy kissing her, but if you embody the languid sensuality of morning, Kanaya is caffeine binging and morning breath. Her bulge will most likely be on lockdown until at least five o’clock. More’s the pity. “Mm,” she hums, and you curl your toes, humming in response. “My garden needs weeding,” she says. “I put it off yesterday. The rosemary needs to be transplanted to indoor pots.”

“Jade wanted some for the windowsill,” you say.

“I was going to include some of the thyme,” she adds. “And maybe buy some bush basil, or sage.”

“She’ll like that. I’ll join you in a few hours?” You enjoy writing in the garden while Kanaya tends to her plants. It’s how you spend many of your days, steeping in the companionable silence. Spending time with Kanaya is far from the problem—spending _too much_ time with Kanaya... ay, there's the rub.

The light from the window streams down in hazy columns, live with flickering dust motes. It shapes the high arch of Kanaya’s cheek, painting shadows in the hollow of her throat. You thrum with the need to have your mouth there, following the heady scent of sun-warmed skin, chasing the tang of citrus past her lips until she glows bright enough to put entire galaxies to shame. “That sounds nice,” says Kanaya, and bends her impossibly tall frame to kiss your cheek. You bite the corner of your thumbnail when she pulls away, sweeping off with such careful, precise footsteps that you hardly believe that a few minutes ago she was barely verbal.

Finding things to do that aren’t basking in her presence every second of every day is still a challenge, but you know you’ll get sick of each other much faster if you don’t force the issue. You look back to your magazine, instead of succumbing to the wistful desire to watch her go.

You’re glad to have your thoughts interrupted by long, shapely brown legs and the clink of a mug against hardwood. The smile you offer Jade is gracious, even more so when she offers you a steaming cup of tea. You resist the urge to ignore the tea and kiss her instead, taking hold of the handle. It’s hotter to your touch than it is to hers. (You want to feel that residual heat under your dress, pressed tight to your skin, thumbs rough against your nipples.) “Thanks,” you say. Jade tells you what kind it is, but you’re too riveted by the long twist of hair draped artfully over her collarbone to really give a shit about the tea you’re drinking. You narrowly avoid burning your tongue when you swallow a mouthful.

Jade grew beautiful in the three years you were apart, and after the Game gently deposited your surviving friends on the afterimage of an old Earth, she grew lovelier still. When the differences were too surreal for you to handle, you only had to look to Jade for comfort and stability. Neither of you knew much of the outside world beyond your respective shades of isolation; the sting of society is intense, hitting what precious little you remember of humanity right where it hurt most. You can’t imagine what it must be like for Jade.

But now you have a world that’s a double-exposed print, nothing like you remembered despite it being cobbled together from the minds of everyone who should have known it best. It’s a cheap consolation prize. It will never replace the world you lost.

Your home was not always as carefree as it is now, but the pain could only be drawn out so much before it popped like a cheap, overstretched dollar store balloon. In the end, the fact that you were all together meant more than familiarity ever could. Besides, it’s selfish of you to feel unstable in your surroundings, considering what the trolls must have experienced getting used to human (“human”) culture.

Jade reaches across the space between you to rest her head on your shoulder, her spine curving to make up for your difference in height. The first time you met in person, she’d been shorter than you. Now, she stoops to kiss the hem of your dress, lips half off the cloth, pleasant against your skin. “We’re very lucky Terezi didn’t rip out the ceiling light,” you muse, staring out the window at the gentle slope of your yard.

She laughs. “That would have been pretty unexpected.”

“You’d have been the one fixing it,” you say.

“Then I’d be able to teach you how to do electrical wiring!” Jade says, not sounding put out or disappointed by this at all.

Haha, no. “As fun as that sounds, I’m going to have to pass on the prospect of electrocuting myself and possibly setting fire to our home.”

“I think a little excitement would do you some good,” she says as you sip placidly at your tea.

“My doctor says that my excitement intake is at a perfectly healthy level, and to increase it might put unnecessary strain on my heart. Apologies.”

“Not apologies,” Jade argues. “Excuses.” She then pinches you in the side, causing you to jerk and spill a large, fat drop of piping hot liquid onto your lap. It soaks quickly into the fabric, fortunately missing the part of your skirt that was actually covering your legs. You’re fine, but Jade squeaks in horror anyway. “Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry!”

You set your mug down on the floor and extract yourself from her grip, reassuring as you go, “Thank you for your distress; I regret to inform you that I think I’m going to survive.” She continues to hover as you pry yourself out of your house dress, not bothering with the curtains on the wide, open window. Your neighbors on that side are around pretty infrequently, anyway. There’s an image of you, shirtless, in nothing but a scrap of silky violet fabric, stretched over the doughy softness of your hips. Not the skinniest of girls, you nonetheless lack Aradia’s voluptuous curves, or Jade’s rock-hard musculature.

You’re soft. You always have been, though with womanhood you expanded like a marshmallow in a microwave. The sun’s rays are warm but the glass is still cold when you trace your finger around your swollen reflection, which on a good day you might describe as rubenesque.

Spidery hands slip like eels between your arms and your ribcage, folding over both of your breasts at once. You feel extremely lucky not to hear a ‘honk’ or some other such noise as Terezi raises up on tip-toes to sink teeth into your shoulder. “Can I help you?” you inquire, not really _complaining_ , as it were. Her hands are just small enough to make your chest look moderately full, despite being the only part of you that didn’t seem to grow with age.

Her response is muffled by a mouthful of your flesh, which she chews enthusiastically. Considering you’ve been dying for some action all morning, you’re not particularly inclined to stop her.

You close your eyes, letting your head fall back as Terezi’s skinny fingers massage your flesh. You hear a soft chuckle, the creak of the hardwood, but you don’t give it too much attention until Terezi’s teeth withdraw and one of her hands twists back to rifle through your hair, tugging at the back. “I detect ruminating,” she whispers.

“Do you now.”

“I picked up on the scent of your wistful musings from all the way upstairs,” Terezi proceeds to inform you.

“Ah,” you say. “I’ll do my best not to project so loudly next time I find myself feeling pensive.” You know that’s not as easy as you make it sound. You and Terezi share a (rather belatedly formed) bond as seers, although your powers from the game have receded to nothing more than extremely sharp memories and heightened senses. Jade can tell the exact distance between a knife and your flesh from half a glance, and Terezi can hear you thinking from across the room.

“You say that now,” Terezi purrs, “But here I am, giving you what you want. You’re going to think you can get away with this in the future if I keep this up!”

You snort. “Are you implying my thoughts deserve punishment?”

She grins into your neck, nips your earlobe. “That is _exactly_ what I am implying, Miss Lalonde.” The world spins, though not particularly quickly, and you’re facing Jade, still on the floor, and Aradia, propped in the armchair, both smiling devious, wicked smiles. Your back is tight against Terezi’s bony chest, her hand still in your hair, and you can feel all of her ribs through her shirt. “The prosecution would now like to present her case to the jury,” she announces.

“Go ahead!” Aradia says, laughing.

“The defendant, Miss Lalonde, has been having Emotions of a Dubious Nature—ones which I _shudder_ to inform the court do not reflect very positively on herself! Although the defendant is, to use the lingo, ‘gagging for it,’ the prosecution would like to take a firm stance on dissuading Miss Lalonde from any future episodes. As it stands, giving her what she so clearly wants might just be enabling future misdemeanors, which is behaviour that, quite frankly, the prosecution is not willing to tolerate.”

“She’s suggesting I need to be punished,” you clarify, for the ‘jury’s’ sake. Jade has a hand over her mouth to hide her tittering, but Aradia looks to be trying her best to play along.

“No speaking out of turn!” Terezi reprimands. The hand on your hair disappears, giving you a second to wonder before five bony sets of knuckles come down hard on your backside.

Terezi may be small, but she’s far from weak.

You, admittedly, lose your composure a bit. The morning’s been testing you and it catches you off guard, wrenching hard at your competitive gameface. You squirm in Terezi’s arms, _eep_ ing loudly. When you calm down enough to process the people around you again, Jade looks a bit concerned but Aradia’s eyes are bright with whatever the troll version of homoerotic schadenfreude is (because you are sure that must be a thing). Terezi, unsurprisingly, is laughing.

Aradia’s jeans sit low on her hips, her torso cocked so her shirt rolls up the broad curve of her hip, exposing a few inches of plump grey flesh. She flicks the hem of her shirt back down and then gets to her feet, her (now painted) lips parted in a broad smile. “I don’t think you need our help,” she muses, sauntering toward you looking simultaneously very evil and very cute. You’re quite internally conflicted, except way less so when she presses against your front and Terezi digs her claws into the meat of your ass, and Aradia’s fingers come up to halo your chin as her other hand is much less gentle coming down on the outside of your thigh. “This seems like a great solution already,” she says.

“Is it an effective punishment if I enjoy it?” you taunt, lazily plucking your arms from between them and reaching them behind your head to drape backwards over Terezi’s horns. (You were going for her shoulders, but she’s way too short to reach.)

“I don’t think there’s any rule against that,” Jade says from the floor. Aradia’s mouth at your neck all of a sudden makes your head roll back, but you spare a glance for your oldest friend, lips tilting. Her shorts are always so incredibly small, showing off every toned inch of her long, muscular legs. They’re crossed loosely, her elbows propped on her knees, and from your position you can see right down her shirt.

“Lucky me,” you breathe, just as Terezi wheezes out another snicker and brings her hand to your flesh again with a sharp, bright _smack_.

“The prosecution rests,” she purrs. Seconds later, a purring of an altogether different sort breaks the breathy half-silence, and you blink in confusion, noting that Terezi seems to be vibrating at a less familiar frequency. That’s about when the opening to the Macarena kicks in, which you recognize (reluctantly) as her phone alarm. “Shit,” she says.

“Don’t tell me,” you say.

“I gotta go,” Terezi says. She slides out from between you and the window, pushes up onto her toes to kiss you on the cheek. “Take care of her for me,” she says to your other companions, and spanks you once more for good measure before flying from the room.

You sag back against the cold glass, letting your eyes close.

What would have been a calming sigh turns into a hitch of surprised breath when you feel unexpected pressure against the only remaining barrier between your skin and the air, opening your eyes to see brown fingers at the apex of your thighs. Jade is not on the floor anymore. Ah. She meets your eyes, grins so sweetly, and says, “Well.” You hold the air in your lungs, sucking your bottom lip between your teeth. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t finish carrying out your—ahaha— _sentence_ , just because the prosecution had boring adult stuff to do.”

“Boring adult stuff,” you repeat.

“Yes,” says Jade, and her thumb dips low to slide the seat of your underwear to the side, and her fingers are so, so warm.

“Unlike this,” you say, somehow missing that air you’d made a point of keeping just a moment ago.

“Adult, definitely,” Aradia says, her calloused, pudgy fingers rubbing a circle on your stinging thigh, right over Terezi’s parting gift. “But if you really think it’s _boring_ , I’m sure we can make a few alterations to change your mind!”

Jade’s fingers have a wide spread, and you feel every inch of the burn as she deals a powerful strike to the bottommost curve of your butt, and you feel your entire thigh rumble in response. The teasing fingers, stroking to collect the gathering moisture at your center, don’t yield even an inch when you arch forward, away from the blow; you gasp and rock back on your heels but the pressure maintained by Jade’s strong wrist doesn’t alleviate. The window grows warm from the extended contact with your skin. “I think we might need to shake it up, anyway,” she comments, forehead bumping lightly against your temple. “If we don’t she might get too comfortable!”

“Can’t have that,” agrees Aradia.

As far as mornings go, you find you have very few complaints.


	2. aradia ;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aradia and Terezi, on romance and bonding and reminiscing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief warning for this fic! There is no actual gore, trauma, or really anything violent that happens in this story, but it is told from Aradia's POV, so there is some Creepy Narrative Stuff, including moderately graphic descriptions of an eye injury. The eyes are not actually injured and nothing bad happens, but she thinks about it anyway.
> 
> If you can't handle the description, feel free to stop reading at "The new vantage point..." and skip down to the paragraph below that that starts with "She giggles."
> 
> Please enjoy! :D

There are a lot of things you like about discovering this new world—all of which fall under the long, long list of things you like about being alive! You enjoy the big things, like getting to study a new species really closely and go to corpse parties of people you don’t know and listen to all the exciting things the person did before they were dead. You like flying to different countries with Jade and exploring all the nuances of human culture. Under the control of one supreme ruler, Alternia didn’t have nearly this much variation in its inhabitants, and also it was much more dangerous to explore!

You especially like museums, which your home planet didn’t really have, although you miss your sylladex because you aren’t allowed to touch anything or take it home with you, and you’d love to sneak a few things out for closer inspection.

You like small things, too, like being able to go near the ocean and paint with colours that aren’t correlated with the blood of your species. You really like the way the stairs creak when you walk up to Terezi’s attic block. She’s refurbished most of it, at least far enough to take care of the drafts and leaks, but she hasn’t touched the stairs. She says she likes how noisy they are because it means no one can sneak up on her—you like the way it feels like a Haunted House. Jade promised you that on your next trip, you’d visit a bunch of the most haunted places in America, and you can’t wait!

The wood is rough under your socked feet, groaning with each step. Not a lot of things in Alternia were made out of wood, unlike here, where it’s one of the most common building materials. You think that’s probably because there aren’t as many venomous flesh-eating invertebrates hiding in Earth’s tree trunks, which you also hear are generally not poisonous and don’t cause hives when you touch them under the thick bark. Earth is so weird and cool!

You can’t hear any music or television or talking inside the room, so you knock freely, rapping out a little rhythm onto the rickety door. You don’t have to wait long, which is one of the things you like about Terezi (aside from all the other things). When the door swings open, Terezi grins at you around a mouthful of toothpaste, which flecks into the air when she pulls the toothbrush out of her mouth to exclaim, “Come in!”

Your long skirt swishes around your calves as you shimmy past Terezi, entering the most dragon-y lair you’ve ever seen outside of an actual dragon’s lair. It’s just as colourful as her old hive was—maybe even moreso, but in a slightly less chaotic fashion, since Kanaya helped her decorate. You think it’s pretty hard for Kanaya to be in a building while knowing that there are clashing patterns around somewhere, which is why you and Jade made it a point to be in Mexico when Terezi was doing most of the remodeling.

Observing Terezi’s boxers and thin tank top, you feel a little bit overdressed for the occasion. “I hope I didn’t interrupt something!” you say, dropping down onto the bright orange chaise lounge and propping yourself up with your elbow, grinning.

“Nah,” Terezi mumbles through the froth. “Juht about to shauer.” She disappears into the bathroom door for a second, and you hear a few seconds of running water before she re-emerges, wiping her face with a towel. “Sorry, I was just heading into the shower, but there’s no rush.” She approaches the edge of the giant lounge chair and goes boneless, flopping sideways next to you. The worn down faux leather squeaks a bit. You rub your fingers lightly on the material between your bodies in an attempt to reproduce the sound.

Your smile grows a little bit wider when you look at her, because she’s cute and tiny and just got a haircut, so her ends are all spiky and fraying out more than usual. Her red eyes are uncovered, fascinatingly blank even though she angles her head just so, enough that you’d swear she was actually looking at you. That isn’t true, of course, but you can see her nostrils flaring, which tells you that she’s studying you just as hard as you’re studying her. She isn’t saying anything else, so you don’t really feel the need to say anything of your own. You spent a lot of time in dream bubbles learning that silence is sometimes when the most important things are communicated, because after countless sweeps with essentially the same people you eventually run out of pointless small talk.

Terezi seems to share the sentiment all by herself, smiling back at you and running the tip of her tongue over the flats of her little needley teeth. Your cheek slides out of your palm, coming to rest in a puddle of your wild curls. Shifting on the chaise, you move toward her until only an inch separates your noses; your knees are already knocking together.

The new vantage point allows you to further study her eyes. It’s not that you haven’t done this before, but it fascinates you endlessly. You move your hand to ghost over the constellation of little scars over her temples, remnants of the Alternian sun’s cruel burns. Her thick eyelashes flutter, lids half closing, and you trace the delicate creases of her eyelid. As soon as the pads of your fingers withdraw her eyes pop back open, wide and red, and you curiously examine the scarred-over ruin of her cornea. You look for hints of her old eyes in there, trying to find rich amber and the shadow of an iris. The foggy crimson scar tissue conceals her whole sclera, hiding the damaged features under thick, unsettling network of tiny ridges. Inspecting the texture, you imagine it must feel strange against the inside of her protective eye flaps.

“Does it hurt to close your eyes?” you ask, thumb drawing a crescent beneath her lower lash line.

“It did at first,” Terezi responds quietly, blinking as if you reminded her. “I’m used to it, though.”

“What does it feel like now?”

Her smile grows crooked. “Tickles, a little.” Her eyes twitch in their sockets; you can see right where her pupil should have been by the oblong swell that would indicate the cornea of a healthy eye. Their movement is sluggish and uncoordinated, probably just a reflex. You definitely can respect how thoroughly fucked her sight must be; even if the internal mechanisms of her eye weren’t completely fried by the untamped radiation flooding her chambers (which you don’t doubt they were), there’d be no way to see through these burns.

Thinking back to how powerful the sun must have been to cause this much damage gets you a little excited, to be honest.

“Most people don’t like looking at them this long. Or this closely,” Terezi offers, lashes fluttering again, feather-light against the pad of your thumb.

You give the sharp edge of her cheekbone a consoling pat. “It’s gruesome, yes,” you respond honestly. “I think they're incredible.”

She giggles, pushing past your questing fingers to nuzzle her cartilage nub against yours. You coo back at her, closing your eyes as your foreheads meet. Terezi's temperature is highblood tepid; you've gotten cozy with higher, but you prefer the feeling of actually being able to feel her skin to the foggy, sharp-edged memories of ice cold against a metal shell flowing with the same frigid swill.

You're not on the market for a kismesis, or anyone, really, but if you were dating around you don't think you'd go much higher than Terezi. Even the new, unfamiliar trolls milling about don't really interest you. Only half of you came out of the game, alive but far from unscathed, and although the mutilated session added trolls to this foreign human planet, they aren't... right. They all avoid you, sensing on some subconscious level that something about you and your friends is _different_. Little do they know that _they're_ the ones who changed, not you guys.

Besides... you know all you need to know about trolls by now. There are more interesting things to pursue!

Things like weird, synthetic earth materials, and pretty girls sitting on them. Those are two things that you consider very interesting right now. You tilt your head up to press your lips to the angular tip of Terezi’s nose, then trill in the back of your throat when she thumbs the ridges of your thick horns, following the spiral toward your scalp. While her thin fingers try to fit around your rack you kiss up to the bridge of her nose, along the side, the corner of her eye. You try to kiss her eyelid but she shakes you off, letting go of your horn long enough to jam her cranium under your chin, forcing your head up so she can bite clumsily at your throat. It reminds you of a teething barkbeast wiggler, so you spend more time giggling than you do gasping.

Encouraging, you paw at her own horns, which are little and narrow and cute and you like them a lot. She moves lower down your shoulder and you take advantage of the angle to tilt your head forward and lick one of her horns, bursting into chuckles when her whole body reacts. You can feel when people touch your horns, but it feels mostly like being enveloped and safe and whole; Terezi’s are ridiculously sensitive, enough that she really doesn’t like people touching them.

You discovered a loophole, though. You’re good at stuff like that, which is why you don’t get a horn to the orbital when you push your tongue further between your lips and go in for another stroke, wrapping the flat of your tongue around the narrow curve.

Terezi lights up like a livewire, spine twitching and claws digging into your skin. She keeps them cut down for professionality, but you wouldn’t have minded if she didn’t. You like blood, up to and including your own. She’s already a vocal person, but you still feel pleased when she muffles a whimper against your clavicle, breath coming in wet pants. You take a moment to swallow so you don’t accidentally drool in her hair, but also because you don’t want to overwhelm her, instead ghosting the sensitive inside of your bottom lip up the length of her horn, absorbing every detail of the texture. They aren’t ridged like yours, but at the same time are not perfectly smooth either. She takes decent care of them, though not as obsessively as Kanaya.

She wraps her skinny fingers around one of your rumblespheres, squeezing through your t-shirt, which you have half a mind to rid yourself of. Your only two options, though, are dislodging Terezi or ripping it with your telekinesis, but you kind of like this shirt (Jade gave it to you; it’s got dinosaur bones on it!) so you allow it to stay, for now. Instead you enthusiastically return to mouthing along Terezi’s horn, getting your fingers in on the action to rub at the base while you drag your tongue up the shaft.

It’s kind of fun feeling her feeble attempts to get you back, or at least reciprocate. She’s completely fried whenever someone pays this much attention to her horns, and witnessing that is way more fun than whatever she could be doing if she wasn’t distracted. Not that you wouldn’t enjoy it, but you don’t particularly feel like you’re missing anything.

You can tell when she’s had enough and you politely pull back, nuzzling your cheek into her hair for a quick second but otherwise leaving her be, your hand resting innocently on her back. You feel her tongue flick against your skin for a brief second when she licks her lips, breath coming in gasps that send cool puffs of air racing underneath your collar. Humming, you rub your hand in a circle between her scapula. “There, there,” you say cheerfully.

She’s on you in a second, eyes wide and teeth bared in a sharp slice of a grin, and only the way her wrists tremble horribly next to your horns gives away her remaining hypersensitivity. Her skinny thighs have trouble straddling your wide hips, especially with how you’re positioned, so you feel no shame hooking your hands behind her glutes and giving her a tug up to your waist.

If the helpful gesture gets you a handful of her ass, you aren’t complaining, but you aren’t admitting to anything either.

It pulls your shirt up a few inches. You are re-reminded of your previous intention of losing it, but Terezi arches her spine like a bendy straw and laves her tongue over your cheek, bringing her thorax close enough that you can hear the loud purring rumbling in her chest cavity. “I need to shower,” she tells you. You raise your eyebrows and give her barely-there glutes an inquisitive squeeze. “You’re invited,” she concludes, purring so loudly now that the words themselves vibrate in midair, threatening to shake apart at the seams. You’re almost surprised her bones aren’t rattling under her skin.

You lift her off you, appreciating the natural way she relaxes into the black-white energy limning the contours of her legs. “That sounds fun!” you say, sitting up and fitting your hands to her waist as she hovers, pixielike, above your knees. You keep her level with you as you climb to your feet, and let your lips press against hers for a moment before setting her down.

A smudge of lipstick stays behind on her mouth. Terezi licks it off, then makes a face at the waxy texture. You snicker all the way to the ablution block, and keep snickering as you finally free yourself from the confines of your shirt.

Your skirt takes a moment to maneuver down your legs, and by the time you start working on your chest sling Terezi’s already stark naked and fiddling with the trap fixtures. The pipes in her old rickety attic block groan and hiss as the water bursts free of the showerhead, slapping you with tiny ricocheting drops. You tense a little, because it’s very cold, but you go back to working your underpants down your thighs as Terezi fiddles with the knobs.

She doesn’t wait for the water to adjust before jumping in, shaking her hair under the spray. “Try it,” she suggests, beckoning.

You smile, and stick your hand in first. “Could you make it a little warmer?” Blood temperatures are silly, but your bulge couldn’t be convinced to come out in water that cold even if the penalty for failing was having to do the game all over again.

“Oh!” she gasps. “Sorry.”

 _Squeak, squeak_.

“How about now?”

Venturing a little closer, you try again, shoving your hand in up to the wrist and letting it stay for a few seconds as the water warms. You feel much less compelled to immediately jerk away from it, so you deem it acceptable and slip in, using her distracted shuffling to make way for you as a cover to subtly twist the hot handle just a _little_ bit higher.

If Terezi notices, she doesn’t seem to care, because she slides the trap door shut and pushes you against the (cold) shower wall, mouth locked with yours. Your hands explore her body shamelessly, sampling the hilly swoops of her ribcage, the notches of her spine, the rough skin at the near-lethal point of her elbows. Terezi tugs at your bottom lip with her teeth and her jutting hips stab into your soft stomach and she scratches at this _extremely_ nice spot on the back of your neck as you relish in following the defined line of her collarbone with your thumb.

She struggles to fit your spheres in her little hands as you easily palm hers, fingertips finding the pebbly nubs on her chest and rolling them until she sighs into your mouth. Their existence seemed to cause some confusion with the humans, who were under the impression that they were exclusively a mammalian trait. All you know is that Kanaya and Terezi have them but you don’t, and while that fact was unremarkable to you before, now you’re _curious_. They don’t seem to have very much biological similarity to the humans’ other than placement, and aren’t even identical in sensation—the trolls’ being slightly rougher and the humans’ alternating between velvet soft or hard depending on arousal and temperature.

You’ve read human biology textbooks, shocked at how much information they contained about even the tiniest details, like nerve endings and veins and different types of cells. Almost everything about the human body has some kind of explanation, which is fascinating to you, because your species is so anatomically varied that most of them didn’t waste time wondering _why_ things were there, and just accepted that they were.

As you lower your mouth to suck at one of Terezi’s chest nubs, you get excited all over again about the prospect of using this changed, oddball planet as an opportunity to absorb more information than you ever could have back in Alternia’s limited, small minded ranking system. The hollow ring of Terezi’s moan bounces off the walls of the trap, barely dampened by the rushing water. It’s a gentle reminder to your explorer’s spirit that there are more important things to focus on at the current moment, and looking up comparison studies on troll bodies versus’ human ones can wait.

(You’re totally going to grill Jade about it later, though, and not get distracted by some other cool thing like all the other times.)

Terezi pulls on your hair and you finger her grubscars with long, smooth strokes until you can feel the tight coils of arousal return to her core, causing her to squirm against the glass shower door you didn’t realize you’d backed her into. Obligingly you withdraw a bit, stretching up to return to her mouth.

Your companion has other plans; playfully, she tugs on one of your horns, lifting her leg so she can rub her calf against your side as she directs you lower, toward the floor of the trap. You’re happy to go, sinking down until you’re kneeling and Terezi’s foot is propped on one of your spread thighs, allowing you the perfect angle to tickle the inside of her knee.

After the giggling, squirming mess that ensues, you pay special attention to her thigh, teeth and lips pulling teal marks into the surface of the skin, made vivid by the steam. You follow it to her sheathe, barely dilated, and place your tongue there, gentle and coaxing as you tease the opening but don’t dare try to push inside. There’s the tiniest taste of salt, but mostly there’s just water, slicking her skin and running your bangs into your eyes. It’s annoying, but you refuse to keep them closed.

You hook her knee over your shoulder. The shower doors creek when she puts the weight of her upper back against the glass, counterbalancing against her one grounded foot. You’ll catch her if she slips and falls, of course, and you’re far from protesting when she grips your horn for balance, the other hand sweetly brushing the hair out of your eyes.

Kindness like that can’t go overlooked, so it’s with reciprocal enthusiasm that you get your mouth up tight against her nook and thrust your tongue for all its worth.

Once you’re sure that she’s stable—you’re pretty solid, and thus a much better anchor than one might assume—you let the hand not concerned with holding Terezi’s hip, both to keep her upright and at a favourable angle, drift down your own curves to find your nook. You just palm it, callous rough over your sheathe and fingers pressed flat and rubbing your minimal outer lips. The combined effect of touching yourself and listening to Terezi’s escalating keens and breathless giggles makes short work of getting your bulge halfway out, and when you use your powers to lift Terezi’s leg even higher than your shoulder can allow and place long, full licks from her nook to her sheathe, feeling Terezi’s bulge curl out over the flat of your tongue gets you excited enough to bring everything you got out to play.

The shower washes away most of the natural lubrication, leaving her bulge wet and shiny and desperate looking. Terezi points her nose down at you, lips parted and eyes blown cartoonishly wide when you don’t immediately get to putting your mouth on it. It’s so cute that you let her leg down slowly, grin mischievous.

Terezi doesn’t waste time whining or pouting, and only allows you to get as far as shifting off your knees before she dumps herself in your lap, forcing your glutes down against the tile floor and getting your bulges nice and friendly in the process. You still shiver when you recline back against the trap wall, which is still cold, but the angular tealblood girl in your lap is a perfectly adequate distraction, especially when her bulge wraps around yours and you breathe out a quiet, satisfied sound. She steals it from your mouth and rocks her hips close, demanding another. You give it up freely, smoothing your hands up her back to catch a sodden mass of hair.

Her own chirps and wheedles are melodic against the steady drone of falling water, and just as you’re falling into a trance it occurs to you that traditional showering is useful for more than extremely pleasant bulge hugs.

The bottle of Generic Body Cleanser comes neatly to your hand. You didn’t have to do any guessing because it’s the only container in the entire trap, alone on the suspended wire rack with nothing to keep it company but a lonely, tired washcloth. It may be generic but the smell is pungent, even with the fog of the shower clouding your senses. Terezi’s ears perk when you squirt a puddle of cleanser into your cupped palm. “What are you—” she starts to ask, before you smear the chilly soap up between her scapula and into her hair, starting to work it in.

“Showers are meant to get clean!” you say, using both hands to work her hair into a lather. Throughout the process your bulges don’t uncoil, and you leave the water to rinse Terezi off on its own when you lower your soapy hand to the slowly undulating knot and squeeze them.

You make identical noises of approval, and while you stroke your combined lengths Terezi arches her back and runs her fingers back through her hair until the gentle rock of her hips is not quite so steady anymore. One of your hands goes to her rumblesphere as your mouths meet for the last frantic seconds, your body tense and straining as Terezi bears down on you hard until she’s screaming against your chin.

Post-orgasmic drop doesn’t seem to apply to her, because she pulls away from you almost immediately, sprawling all her edges out in your lap as she lowers her face and swallows your bulge whole.

You don’t last long at all.

She finishes getting all of the soap out of her hair and releases her slurry down the shower drain while you towel off, loose-limbed and satiated. The silence when the water shuts off is momentarily deafening, but your attention is abruptly jerked away from aural input when your more visual receptors notices Terezi plummeting toward the ground much more rapidly than should be healthy.

As promised, you catch her. Upon inspection she’s flushed bright teal and giggly, complaining of being lightheaded while she lolls in your arms. You must have turned the hot water up too high. “Whoops!” you say, not indicating that you’re referring to yourself and not her fall. You give her a kiss and then wrap her in a towel and carry her off into the main block to cool down.

* * *

You perform a weird little dance on your way downstairs, where one of you will take the other’s hand and then pull away seconds later. It’s not that you mind touching her like that, it’s just that you don’t want to give the wrong impression.

If you ever took a matesprit, you’d love for it to be Terezi. You don’t know why, despite all the fondness you have for this girl, the idea still doesn’t appeal to you. You’d rather not have to explain it. You’d rather not end up bruising her heart and her ego like the ones who came before her. You are infinitely relieved that she does not ask, or even bring it up, and accepts when you are the one to pull your hand away for the third and final time.

The door to your block is open. You must have forgotten to close it when you went upstairs. Terezi passes you, not waiting up when you pause to push it closed, and you wonder if you hurt her feelings. You kind of wish you could read minds or something, or at least smell emotions like she can.

“Do you want something from the kitchen?” You pause, your fingers resting on the handle of the door leading to the staircase. Where you’re standing you can hear the muffled sounds of the movie playing in the den.

Terezi stands in the hallway, head tilted to the side, looking catlike with her sharp red glasses. The t-shirt she’s wearing is so long it reaches her knees, almost like a dress. You don’t know if it’s intentional, or if she’s just impossibly small; a firefly that blinks a jubilant red instead of yellow. “I’m not hungry,” you say, because it’s usually the truth. When she twists her mouth and turns to walk into the nutrition block, you follow her.

“You don’t have to wait for me, I’ll be down in a second,” she says. You smile at her and lean against the pantry.

The silence is only broken by the sound of Terezi untwisting the tie on a bag of blueberry bagels, the creak of the oven as she halves one and pops it face-up under the broiler. She sets a jar of strawberry preserves on the counter and pours the contents of a slivery packet of red power into a bottle of water. Reclining back against the fridge, she recaps the bottle and begins to shake it absently, staring blankly in front of her. “Do you know what I miss?” you ask.

Her head twitches toward you, chin tilting an inch in your direction so you can see the shadow of one of her nostrils. Content that you have her attention, you continue, “I miss grubsauce!”

A furrow appears between her eyebrows, visible in the space her cat-eye lenses don’t obscure. “We have mayonnaise,” she says.

You stick your tongue out. “That’s not even kind of the same.”  
  
Terezi cocks an eyebrow now, twisting the bottle open again. You hear the faint hissing of the powder as it’s absorbed into the agitated water. She takes a sip before she responds, carefully considering you the entire time. “They’re both made of eggs,” she says. “Just human mayo isn’t made from the eggs of our species’ young.”

You shrug, smiling helplessly. “Maybe I miss that part. It’s unsettling when it’s just white.”

She looks very much like she isn’t sure what expression to make, her lips twitching in aborted little attempts at emoting. Exasperated, she shakes her head and swallows another mouthful of cherry flavoured water. When she lowers the bottle you can see her teeth. “It’s not unsettling when it’s cannibalism?” she asks, the barest hint of a laugh underneath her words.

“Death is a natural part of life!” you say, excited now. “Plenty of species eat their young!” You also just really enjoyed opening each new container and wondering what colour it was going to be, even though it was much more likely to be red or yellow than it was to be blue or green. The blue always tasted the best, though if that was because it actually was better or if you just enjoyed it out of spite was anyone’s guess. As far as you’re concerned, both things could be true.

“Just because we can doesn’t mean we should,” Terezi says, coming close enough to bop you on the nose with her water bottle. “I can’t believe that after everything we learned and everything we changed, you still miss things that were the product of a system that didn’t value troll lives as more than very creative cannon fodder.”

Laughing, you run your fingers through the damp tangles of your long hair, listening to the oven creak again, this time accompanied by much more companionable sounds. “It’s okay to miss things,” you say. “It doesn’t mean I want to go back to the way life was before the game.”

“Whatever,” she mumbles around a large mouthful of bagel. “Let’s go downstairs.”

Rose is sitting in Kanaya’s lap, and from the lack of proximity between their faces, you somehow don’t think they’re paying much attention to the movie. Rose’s feet are stretched out into Jade’s lap, who’s leaning eagerly toward the screen, very obviously too riveted to care that they don’t seem to care. You grin as Terezi canonballs into the pile, getting Rose and Kanaya good and bothered before she clambers into the empty space next to Jade, curling her legs against the taller girl’s side.

You make much less of a stir when you sit on Terezi’s other side, other than inspiring a little bit of shuffling to make room for your wide hips. You get comfortable just in time to watch some burly guy’s head get chopped clean off; Jade whoops, dislodging Terezi and knocking her backwards into you.

Her empty eyes blink up at you in confusion, shades askew on her nose. She’d tucked her knees inside her t-shirt and now resembles a bony little pillbug, stuck helplessly on her back. Giggling softly, you push her glasses straight and then lightly pat her cheek, touch lingering. The black stroke of her lips, blue from the screen’s low, curves into a resigned smile, and she’s gentle when she bites down on your thumb.

You love her, but you don’t pity her. You don’t think you pity anyone, really, so you hope she won’t take it personally.

Terezi pushes her legs out of her t-shirt, stretching them to overlap Rose’s feet in Jade’s lap. She stays with her head on your thighs, watching you with resigned fondness. This arrangement, all five of you together, was never about romance, anyway. It was always solidarity and company, getting out of your thinkpans long enough to continue living.

You do intend to continue living, with all your being. There’s a lot more out there than the lines of a quadrant grid; countless wonders to discover and enjoy. Your hand drifts from her face, trailing down her shoulder until you can twine your fingers with hers. You're happy to be able to experience all these cool and wonderful things with her—with all of them.  You hope she's happy, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aromantic sexual characters are so ridiculously fun to write. That is all.


	3. kanaya ;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanaya is displeased by having to pre-plan her bloodletting rituals with her hivemates. There are worse things that could happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely dealing with consensual vampirism. No gore, no horror, but around fourteen instances of the word "blood," according to CTRL+Find.

You’ve always felt like the schedule takes the romance out of it. Objectively you realize that the purpose of the schedule is so you don’t overfeed from any one person and put them in the hospital (as if you could eat that much), but putting it on a _chart_ just feels so clinical.

It doesn’t help that Jade has one of her friends from the lab extract her blood with a needle and gives it to you that way, because she argues that using your teeth is unsanitary.

Adjusting to having to feed so often was not the most comfortable experience. On the meteor, within the game’s jurisdiction, there were alchemiters capable of producing a curious and extremely private selection of things that could adequately satisfy your cravings. Drinking from someone was either an emergency, or… private. Special. Rose tucked against you, fingers light on your jaw and lips opened into a soft, lovely shape. Her throat bared in an empty corridor, tempting. Whisking her away to somewhere private was impulsive and passionate and thrilling, and your pusher still pounds in your chest when you look back on the memories.

You were very ill your first few weeks on this human planet, so much that the idea of feeding was far from your mind. How could you think of pleasure in a situation like that? The error you’d made in associating drinking from someone as a treat instead of a necessity was pointed out by Terezi, much to your embarrassment. The environment of Alternia, or a dream bubble, or the cold void of paradox space were all very different pitted against the tangible reality of an unfamiliar planet’s atmosphere.

So, yes, you’ve _adjusted_ , but that doesn’t mean you have to _like_ it.

The calendar—a calendar, for God’s sake!—on your phone has “Rose” listed for tonight, tastefully ambiguous in case of any unwanted glances. You sigh as you remove your gloves, gently massaging your fingers. The atmosphere is not the best for your undead joints.

You are perfunctory as you brush dirt from your skirt and adjust the grow lights and timed sprinklers in your greenhouse, checking each row of flora as you close up for the night. Your hair looks a mess, judging from the blurry reflection you spot in a piece of sheet metal you’ve been meaning to repurpose. What you really need is a shower and a hit from one of those flavoured cigars Terezi is always smoking—though, maybe in the opposite order. Rose might have stopped drinking but you don’t doubt her ability to label you a hypocrite with the littlest provocation. You’ve seen the faces she makes when Terezi has to drag her hungover exoskeleton to class some Mondays.

(Terezi still manages to rank among the highest in her university and is well on the path to a successful law career, so you don’t think her perusal of party culture is quite the same as Rose’s meteor breakdown. You take pains to never actually bring this up.)

‘Rose,’ seemingly the bad word of the day, will be home soon from an outing with Jade, and she has no patience for you dragging your heels on your feedings, prone to nagging as if you were some recalcitrant wiggler. You shrug open your hiveportal, already unbuttoning the blouse you garden in, preparing to slip into something more becoming for your… ‘date.’

The room is dark, but your nose twitches. You smell fragrant smoke, wafting from behind the privacy screens you set up to separate your sleeping area from the space where you do your sewing. A faint glow you hadn’t noticed at first is visible through the thin fabric. You’d painted it yourself.

You push one of the sections to the side, breaking the wall enough that you can slide through and—

Candles. Flickering softly on your desktop, the corner of your dresser, along the windowsill. A bare, sloping back, framed by gauzy fabric around the shoulders, knees folded to the side of what you realize to be your desk chair. Rose sits backwards on the chair, facing the window with her chin on her folded wrists. You know the dress—you made it for her, two years ago. You know the way it flutters around her knees and exposes all your favourite parts of her skin. She must have heard you enter, but takes her time lifting her head and turning toward you, smiling lips painted pale red instead of her usual black. You enjoy both, but you designed this dress to look like the sun.

You smooth your hair to the side self consciously, internally screaming at yourself. She’s wearing pearl earrings and you’re covered in dirt with a half unbuttoned blouse and not even a nice chest sling to make up for it (though, from the looks of it, Rose isn’t wearing one either).

Rose slowly gets to her feet, and it’s long past dusk but you are illuminated in light and a breath away from swooning.

“I thought you would be out until later,” you stutter, stupidly.

Her hand touches your hip and your spine straightens. “Plans change,” Rose says, and stretches to kiss you. You lean into her like a transfixed moth, taking her around the waist until you remember your dirty sleeves and jerk back.

“I just came from the garden,” you hurriedly explain, flushing as Rose guides fabric down your arms until the blouse is hanging loosely around your stomach and its gruesome scar. She’s on display from the swoop of her bust to the small of her back and yet somehow you’ve managed to lose your dignity first. Her fingers continue to fiddle with the buttons when she introduces her tongue to the taste of your clavicle, until she frees you from the garment entirely. You are confused and bare skinned as your matesprit runs a fingertip along the waistband of your skirt, deep violet eyes shifting to gaze up at you.

It hurts to swallow, and to not be touching her. You don’t force yourself to hold back from splaying your fingers between her shoulderblades. You try not to go weak in the knees at the smell of her hair and the modest iridescence of her earrings, and mostly succeed, up to the point where your lips touch once more. Cradling her chin in your palm, you kiss her deeply and ignore the pulse throbbing below her skin.

Or, you try to.

She wraps her fingers around your horn, enveloping you exquisitely, and tugs your mouths apart, leading you to the side of her face. You kiss the pearl studding her ear, follow the shell with the tip of your tongue, attempt to captchalogue the sound of her sigh. Her scent is poignant, nostalgic; you wouldn’t be surprised if her perfume was named after a celestial body, because it reminds you of space; of being tucked in a dark room, a vein fluttering under your thumb.

Your teeth are nibbling delicately at her cartilage when she whispers, “You’re hungry,” so simply and matter-of-fact.

You pause. “So I am.”

Rose runs her hands from the crease of your pelvis to your hips, around the darkened hollow of your belly, up your thoracic cage and to your small spheres, fingers flexing, rubbing. She hums and smooths her hands flat under your arms, curving about your back as she rests her head to the side and offers you her throat, burned ochre in the candlelight. “Take your time,” she says, lashes low and kissing her cheeks. “But don’t, entirely.” She breathes a laugh, and your insides twinge with want.

Shuddering, you look to the bed. She’s already laid out a sheet to protect your comforter, although you are usually a very neat eater. “You’re incredible,” you say, stroking her spine and ignoring how your fingers tremble. “Exquisite.”  
  
“Flawless?” she enquires.  
  
“As far as I can judge,” you say, momentarily meaning it.

Rose laughs, less elegant and more sardonic, and presents you with her side, arm raised. “I highly doubt it, but you’re sweet,” she says as you unzip her dress. The fabric rolls off her like water, melting into a ring around her feet, bare and soft and stepping out of it almost immediately, in the direction of your bed. You watch her go, unfastening your skirt and letting it join the dress in a heap on the floor. Her underwear are lacy rouge; probably meant to be inspiring, as if you were not already playing directly into her hands. You follow her to the rest platform, feeling much less impressive with your dirty ankles and white cotton panties with jade stains on the crotch. She reclines, and you stretch over her, cheek pressed against her skin, pale and papery and human-delicate like the easily bruised petal to your rough desert leaf.

You breathe in, and your lungs spasm. That you are not technically alive is at once so doubtable and so painfully real, because you need her for life in more ways than one and yet you don’t know how a corpse could ever be capable of such raw _feeling_.

“Flushed for you,” you murmur, nose pressed to her throat.

“Please don’t wait any longer,” Rose asks. Her head lolls, entreating, exposed. You couldn’t refuse her if you wanted to, and so do not hesitate to place your mouth at her throat, licking in preparation.

Lining up just right is exquisitely slow, your hand drifting over her lower body as you take your time. Terezi feeds you from the thigh, where it can be easily covered, and Aradia prefers to offer her wrist, but with Rose it is always here. You couldn’t imagine taking her anywhere else.

Your teeth pierce her flesh, and your bulge stirs in its sheathe. Rose writhes as your nails make crescent moons in her skin even though the lace at her hip. Hot blood hits your tongue and you can barely even _breathe_.

Rose is usually quiet when you pail, but here she moans, sliding her legs together to work off excess energy while she tries to keep her upper body as still as possible, wrists trembling, fingers clenching the sheets with effort. You run the pads of your fingers over the textured fabric, soothing her and yourself, the pattern tactile and grounding even as you feel yourself float higher with every mouthful. “Oh, oh,” she’s whispering, eyes scrunched tight and toes curled, thighs flexing. Your teasing touch at the lace over where she radiates warmth is not appreciated—she makes it clear that you’ve failed to thrill her by grabbing your hand and forcing it against herself, a frustrated groan scratching in her throat.

There’s nothing you would say, or can say; nothing to do but obey, pulling your hand out of her grasp and re-insinuating your fingers beneath the garment, going right to where she wants you. Rose’s voice is unintelligible, a high keen when your two longest fingers circle over that sensitive knot of nerves, the tiny thing she has instead of a proper bulge.

Your tongue probes at one open wound, coaxing the blood to still flow. It’ll eventually slow on its own, and by then you’ll have had more than your share. Enveloped in bliss though you are, you don’t fall behind on stroking at your partner, making sure your head is screwed on tight enough to continue pleasuring her, using the sound of her frantic moans as a measuring stick for your success. Rose’s hips buck; she grinds down hard on your hand, and with all the friction of her glutes rubbing against your front… You don’t notice the exact moment your bulge slides from your body, but you aren’t particularly shocked when you finally feel the front of your underwear grow damp.

With her squirming against your fretful bulge and her blood filtering sluggishly into your mouth you fail to notice something else: that being, the sound of the door. Footsteps, as dainty as a musclebeast trodding upon dead leaves in autumn.

You twine your fingers gently in Rose’s hair to hold her steady and dare to suck harder, risking a bit of discomfort on her end but only because you know she enjoys the pain. Although you’re sure you could never hurt her, the strongarming during your feeding sessions is not only to oblige her. It strokes the tiny predator inside you, the feeling of subduing prey. That the prey is wet and willing and wanting to be subdued, well. That makes it all the more pleasant, you think.

Rose jerks and you hold back the urge to bite her again—you’ll not be losing _that_ much control, thank you much—but your fingers do speed up against her, and you can tell by the escalation of her moans that she’s close, can tell by the spasms in her arms that she’s close, can tell by the way her neck has tensed so that the blood barely flows and you hardly _care_ , sucking now not to feed but to mark, indelibly, to worship, to adore. She is more radiant than the planet-rending sun and you would tell her so if only she did not taste so addictively sweet. You wish to give her more pleasure than even your body can withstand, to give her _yourself_ , forever in her keep.

The bed dips somewhere near your shins. You scream—or was that Rose? It could have come from either of you; more probably both. You look up just in time to see Terezi narrowly avoiding being kicked in the head.

For a moment you’re relieved for your hivemate’s lack of concussion, and then you reconsider the situation.

“Terezi,” you say sternly. Rose’s blood drips from your mouth. The droplet falls with a small _plip_ onto Rose’s arm, and you’d consider licking it off (any less would be a waste) except she makes a frustrated sound and smears it away herself.

“ _What_ are you doing here?” Rose grumbles, glaring daggers at your new friend. Potentially soon-to-be _late_ friend. Although your hairtrigger chainsaw is the running joke in your social circle, you don’t delude yourself into thinking of your temper as particularly dangerous—at least, not in any way comparable to Rose when her ire has been raised. You pet her side soothingly and lick the blood off your lips. The punctures on her neck are leaking, too, the wounds having not fully clotted, which inspires your own regrets and annoyance, since you don’t think Rose will cotton to you just licking it off, no matter how politely you do so.

Despite all the hostility, Terezi seems to find the whole situation hilarious. You’re spectacularly unsurprised. She grins like a shark and scratches behind one of her horns, leveling you with her bare, red eyes. “I smelled shenanigans and thought I’d cash in on a favour,” she says easily, resting her chin on your bed. She spilled over the side in an attempt to avoid Rose’s attack, but doesn’t appear bothered at having to occupy the floorspace.

“Shenaningans,” repeats Rose.

“Yes,” Terezi says. “Like hijinks.”

There’s a moment of pause. You raise your eyebrow at Rose curiously. “What about tomfoolery? Did you smell any of that.”

“Hmmm,” Terezi muses. You roll your eyes and give in to the desire to clean the drying blood off Rose’s shoulder with your tongue. “There is _most assuredly_ some tom-fooling happening here,” she eventually confirms. “I’m sure of it.”

“I appreciate the confirmation,” Rose says, tilting her neck to give you room, although she expresses no outward indication of pleasure. It occurs to you that your hand is still down her undergarments, but you’re not sure whether you’re meant to remove it or not. “Now, enlighten me on the favour? I will accept nothing less than your having taken a bullet for someone to justify an infraction of this magnitude.”

Terezi snickers in such a way that _you_ consider kicking her in the face yourself, although you abstain, hoping to salvage the evening. “Kanaya promised me that I could drop in on one of her feedings!”

Suddenly your presence at Rose’s throat feels significantly less welcomed. You feel similarly about Terezi. “Did she, now,” Rose says flatly.

“I’m sure I didn’t mean it like _this_ ,” you say, glancing between Rose and Terezi, but mostly directing the comment toward Rose.

“That might have been important to clear up at the time,” snips Rose.

“Forgive me for underestimating her egregious incompetence with social niceties,” you deadpan.

“Hey!” Terezi interjects, placing both her hands on your bed and pushing herself up, lips twisted. “Objection!”  
  
“Overruled,” says Rose.  
  
“Sustained,” Terezi shoots back.

“Can you even do that?” you wonder.

Terezi does not seem to care. “I’m sure I have no knowledge of whatever boring, party-crashing tea you’ve both been drinking, seeing as you’re acting like I just ran over your pet barkbeast with my bike. However, never fear! I’ve dealt with three unbearably isolated human sweeps full of your bullshit—”

“Years,” corrects Rose, but Terezi ignores her.

“—so I am _well practised_ by now. You might even say that I’m an expert on the subject, inasmuch as anyone can be an expert on unpredictable foolishness.”

“Kind of like the weather,” you say.

“Even worse.” Terezi steeples her fingers, nostrils flaring. You want to relocate your hand to a more modest location, but you don’t want to call attention to its current orientation, so it stays. Rose’s neck is beginning to scab over. You make an annoyed sound under your breath. The block falls into a tense moment of silence, which is broken near immediately by Terezi dissolving into shrill laughter. “It’s like you’re going to your graves,” she snickers, and pours herself onto the bed.

She slithers like an eel until she’s nose-to-nose with Rose, then makes you jump when her hand cups against the back of yours, pushing your fingers down. You should have known she’d notice. Blindness, in Terezi’s case, does not guarantee a lack of attention to detail. Rose is momentarily stricken speechless, which doesn’t surprise you. Terezi smiles and affectionately licks her cheek. “Better?” she asks.

“Your entrance could use improvement,” Rose breathes.

Terezi snorts, rubbing harder against your hand. “This would have been the plan all along if you both weren’t so uptight!”

“Try knocking next time,” you suggest, and lean over Rose’s shoulder to kiss her. Your mouth is still thick with blood and you don’t doubt that Terezi had a vested interest in specifically this experience, if her liberal use of tongue and pleased noises are anything to go by. You don’t need Terezi’s hand to guide you against Rose anymore; your muscles more than adequately take over the task as you lick your own way into Terezi’s mouth, not being particularly careful not to prick her with your fangs. Your matesprit sits pressed tight against your chest, tight enough that you can feel her breaths deepen as you work her back toward her earlier satisfaction. Terezi’s fingers join yours, worming past them to rub against Rose’s nook, probing.

“Stop,” Rose says.

You freeze immediately. “What’s wrong?” Alarmed, you pull your hand away from her entirely. Rose swallows, then shoots you an unimpressed look. “You’re going to stretch them out, if not rip them entirely.”

You think you could kill her. You think about ripping her underwear down the side just to spite her. Terezi laughs brightly and yanks the garment down Rose’s legs before you can act rashly and get yourself in trouble, which your withering bulge is thankful for. “Let’s do something fun,” Terezi announces, and lunges for you instead of Rose. You are… unprepared.

She ends up straddling your chest, and you end up with Rose helpfully restraining your wrist so you don’t accidentally eviscerate your friend. You didn’t notice her taking off her pants, but you certainly have taken note, now that her nook is only a few inches away from your face. “Although I maintain that any and all negative consequences of my visit lie squarely on your stuffy, uptight shoulders, I am not an insensitive troll. Through my dazzling powers of perceptiveness and deduction, I have noticed that Miss Maryam smells _quite_ unsatisfied with the state of her meal, and would like to offer something as penance.” You’re confused, until you realize that she’s near straddling your face, and you can see the barely healed punctures from the last time you fed from her on her exposed thigh.

“It’s not your turn,” Rose protests, coming to the same conclusion that you did.

Terezi scoffs, batting her hand at the human. “I can assure you, I’ll be fine. There is a lot of blood that I can lose before it becomes a problem.”

Rose might disagree further, but you aren’t really inclined to protest. “You’ll have to move closer,” you say, stretching your fingers toward Rose’s. You don’t know if you mean it as an apology or not. Obviously, her plans for the night were… slightly derailed, but there’s nothing doing about it now. You’ll make it up to her, later, when you’re finished with salvaging what’s left of the situation. She releases your wrist and accepts your hand, squeezing it as she drops a kiss to your knuckles.

A moment later she is forced to let go when Terezi repositions herself over your face. Usually you sit between her legs while you feed; this is new and you’re not sure how it’s going to work, but you’re quite willing to indulge her. (And yourself.)

The care that you took with Rose is not present when you bite hard into Terezi’s skin—she likes it that way, and as previously established, you’re more than happy to indulge. Terezi is far louder than Rose, squeaking plaintively as your teeth pierce her flesh and smooth, cool blood floods your mouth. It comes nearly too fast for you to swallow, the flow aided by gravity, and your normal tidiness is put to shame when a stripe of teal runs down your cheek. Rose leaves your side, and reappears by your legs. Your underwear disappears from your person.

Heels digging into the mattress, you groan. Terezi’s bulge is fully unsheathed and keeps glancing your horn in its thrashing, and your bulge is at full attention and working its way down Rose’s throat. She has a strange human quality called a ‘gag reflex,’ which inhibits her often, but she likes to practise. You are far from complaining.

Terezi’s got your horn in her fist and is riding your face like your tongue is in her nook instead of an open gash on her leg, though the two fingers you managed to get up her actual nook might have something to do with that. You aren’t really _doing_ much with them, leaving much of the work up to her, because… well.

It’s more than you usually feed at any one time. You haven’t drank this much blood in a single sitting since your first arrival on this planet, at least two sweeps ago.

It’s overwhelming. You feel a little bit drunk.

You barely notice when Terezi finally draws away, because she replaces her skin with her mouth almost immediately. You kiss back with slow, languid movements, too delirious to do more. Then Rose, too, pulls back, and the loss of her hot mouth on your bulge elicits a desperate whine of protest against Terezi’s cheek. You feel the other troll’s sadistic grin as it spreads wide. You curse her in the back of your thinkpan, but no actual words come out.

“Well, look who’s enjoying herself,” Rose muses, running her fingertips between your spheres. You’d chastise her for the predictable taunt, but you’re busy right now.

You are very, very busy.

Spindly grey fingers wrap once more around your horn and tug; your head follows like your bones have turned to water, fluid within you. The touch feels grounding and good. You close your eyes and do not plan on opening them again. (You think they were already closed, actually.)

Terezi uses her leverage to expose your throat, and you’re powerless to respond when Rose accepts the invitation, sucking on your skin. You don’t have the strength to thrash, even when Terezi’s cold lips encircle the peak of your rumblesphere.

You float somewhere in the midground, where the mouths on your skin and preparatory fingers on your bulge mean very little, all sensations blurring into one. Rose licks teal blood off your chin and teases you for it but you do not understand the words. You long to kiss her and are delighted when she takes the initiative, also taking your other horn in her warm, soft hand.

“—entirely at our mercy,” Terezi says. You don’t think you caught the full comment.

Rose says something about not being one to “look a gift horse in the mouth.” You forget what a horse is, or why someone would ever want to look in its mouth. You forget everything but Rose’s soft thighs moulding to the angular points of your hips, the sensation of your bulge seeking out her entrance. Her hand stops it, preventing you from feeling the inside of her. You fold your palms over your eyes and breathe out a wordless, pleading cry. Terezi laughs and laughs.

The hands are gone from your horns. You don’t know if you want them back. Rose is still hovering over you. Something parts your legs, and when Rose hooks her hands under your raised knees, your bulge sneaks into her a few scant inches, and you sob as if it’s the most intense you’ve ever felt. Rose’s core is so hot you think you might burst into flame.

She kisses the side of your knee, over and over again, and slowly lowers herself until your bulge fills her to the root, the silken padding of her thighs and pubis pressed against your undead skin-and-bones. You want to touch her but you can’t let go of your own face.

A chill runs up your spine as a cool bulge muscles itself into your nook and Terezi’s own skinny frame is flush with your backside and you once heard a poem about fire and ice and you think that this is a metaphor for how you’re going to die, which you turn out to be shockingly okay with when both of them roll their hips at once. You don’t process individual moments; it feels like a single note being played unendingly, an infinite crescendo speeding through your pan. All you are is the way their bodies cant against yours, two powerful muscles connecting each disjointed frame, the feeling of high green writhing within you; the clenching inner cavern of your matesprit; fractured bits of data flooding your overwhelmed senses.

You peek through your fingers long enough to see Terezi rubbing between Rose’s legs, her other arm wrapped about her chest, clutching her for support; Rose herself is gripping your knees, vicelike, bent so her forehead bumps your shin as she moves, desperate, erratic.

You implode.

You can only guess that they finish each other off, because you retain no memory of the minutes following your orgasm. Your stomach is full and your head is heavy and they’re curled around you, seeming satisfied, so you feel no guilt in assuming the best.

You close your eyes.

— and open them again, a second later. “Did you bandage the bites?” you ask, concerned.

“Go to sleep, Kanaya,” Rose says, face down in a pillow. They somehow managed to get the sheet off your bed before your slurry soaked through into your blankets. You can still see the leftover smears of dry blood on her skin.

“That’s unsanitary,” you say. Even in the height of chaos, you still took the time to provide cleaning and bandages for anyone you fed from. Yes, it’s pleasant at the time, but mouths are really very dirty, combined with leaving the wounds exposed to other bodily fluids, dust, tiny blanket fibers— “You’re asking for an infection,” you continue, already getting upset about it. If _Rose_ didn’t care for herself, Terezi _definitely_ didn’t, and while Rose is the one whose immune system you’re more concerned about, thigh injuries are far too uncomfortably close to one’s reproductive organs to want to risk infection there. There’s bandages by your sewing station, but you think you’ll have to go into the ablution chamber to get some disinfectant—

A surprisingly strong arm, given how skinny it is, folds over your chest when you move to get up. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Enforcing a strict code of post-coital hygiene,” you respond, clicking at Terezi irritably. You try to push her arm off, because if there’s two things you and Terezi have in common, it’s being very strong while still being very thin, but you have over a foot on her and it tends to come with a few advantages. Rose’s arm locks down on you from the other side, and you haven’t fully re-oriented after overfeeding and. The other stuff.

“No,” says Rose, pushing her face into your neck. You hiss at her. “We will survive the next hour or so without emergency medical attention. Do you know in emergency rooms most people wait one to three hours, anyway? Your bedding is quite pristine; I’m sure we’re not in any danger.”

“You shouldn’t be sleeping so early,” you complain. “Throwing off your sleep schedule interferes with your writing productivity, and if you rest now you’ll wake up at four in the morning and stay awake until noon.”

“That’s a risk we’re going to have to take,” she says, not letting go.

You don’t actually want to sleep anymore, anyway. You don’t even know if you can fall asleep like this. You have the bed, yes, but that’s mostly for Rose’s purposes (and/or anyone else who might be invading your block at the time). When you sleep, if you do, you have a large amount of pillows and blankets for piling on the spongy platform, or on the floor depending on your mood. Terezi’s room has a varied assortment of couches and piles, anything from dirty laundry to out-of-date encyclopedias, and Aradia has nothing but a hammock, so you’re a bit unique in your willingness to conform to human ideas of bedding softness. You let it be for about twenty-nine seconds, before breathing in to prepare another objection.

You are distracted by the sound of something moderately heavy hitting the floor, and notice a moment later that there are no longer three bodies in your bed. Gently pulling out of Rose’s grasp, you peer over the edge of the mattress.

Terezi is on all fours, but she does not stay that way. She staggers to her feet, still very naked, and shuffles out of the gap between the folding screens, nearly knocking one over in the process (you preemptively flinch). “I think you’ve irritated her into retreating,” Rose comments.

“Even the strong must fall,” you say, noncommittal.

You close your eyes. Moments later, something plastic hits you in the face. You open them for the umpteenth time, hissing.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” says Terezi, wielding several alcohol swabs in addition to the bandages she just threw at you. “Or else I will jump out of the window and take all of the disinfectant with me.”

“I am sure I would be distraught and then die,” you retort.

“I know,” says Terezi, tearing open an alcohol swab and plopping back down on the mattress with her legs spread. She offers you the tiny damp square, wrinkling her nose at the smell. “Trust that I do not doubt your ability to work yourself into a conniption over something stupid that doesn’t matter.”

“Now that I’m thinking about it,” you sigh, “Letting you catch a plague and die is sounding more and more appealing.” You press the swab to her bruised skin, none too gently.

Rose snorts, watching you both with her head propped up on her fist. “And here all I wanted was a quiet, romantic evening. Instead, I get this. Incredible.”

“You should have known better,” you say, clucking your tongue. “Schedules are _never_ romantic.”


	4. terezi ;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi's intention to stage a Sexy Cop Roleplay with two of her hivemates is thwarted by a few unforseen circumstances — pun not intended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things:
> 
> 1\. I lied about there being no continuity. This chapter has a tiny big of continuity after Kanaya's chapter, so I recommend reading that one first if you haven't.
> 
> 2\. As I have a length limit of approx 5k for each fic, negotiation for the scene depicted in this story happened offscreen (but rest assured it did happen). Additionally, since everyone involved is in an established relationship they are already intimately familiar with each others' kinks and limits, and so a detailed conversation isn't an automatic preface to enthusiastic consent.
> 
> Everything depicted in or alluded to in this chapter (and all chapters) will be completely consensual & enjoyable for all parties. :}
> 
> (In case you haven't guessed by the above, this is The Kinky Chapter.)

It's hard to find people who appreciate the huge amount of effort you put into things. How much you're underappreciated varies based on the subject—your obsessive, perfectionist attention to detail is certainly taken advantage of by your group mates, but at the same time they would be dead without you, so you imagine there's a smidgen of gratitude there (or at least relief that they don't have to do any work). Half of your professors appreciate you to the point where you do all your work competently, but they often seem irritated when you read the whole book before the class starts and research the topics so that you can offer corrections if they make a mistake in lecture. Your boss—human—doesn't seem to even _recognize_ how hard you work to not kill your customers.

Those sting, of course, but you are feeling this one a bit harder, admittedly. Do your hivemates even _know_ how long it took you to design a double ended wrist cuff rope tie? All that work you put into making it comfortable and functional yet still aesthetically pleasing—and _you_ can't even see it! They could at least pretend to be impressed.

You suppose that being affixed to the bookshelf makes it slightly less impressive. In your defense, you didn't have anywhere else on hand to serve as a hard point and Rose forbade you from installing any bondage hooks in the walls or ceiling. (You did order your own Saint Andrews Cross to put in your block, but it hasn't arrived yet. You requested some customizations that are taking a while to build.) Fortunately Rose's preference for edgy modern art décor over wood product furniture offered a semi-functional solution, even if Jade or Aradia could easy pull it over on their own.

They'll just have to be careful. It'd suck to have that many books fall on your head.

In spite of the imperfections, you conduct yourself with poise, in a manner befitting an upstanding officer of the law. Which you are—according to the extremely well-made police uniform replica, anyway, even if you did have to drill holes in the hat for your horns.

The flapper of the riding crop slaps into the palm of your hand. You do it a little too hard and it stings, but you don't let it show. “You should know, before we start, that lying won't do you any good,” you say, standing with your feet apart to make yourself look bigger. It's hard, when your skeleton is made from haphazardly glued toothpicks, to embody any iteration of 'big,' but a true overseer of public safety doesn't let menial things like 'biological reality' affect their zealous pursuit of justice.

You pause, examining your convicts, searching for fearful quaking. You don't notice any quaking, and though eye direction is hard for you to pinpoint, you're pretty sure they aren't even looking at you. They’re both sitting on the floor in nothing but their underwear (you confiscated their clothing for Reasons), burnt marshmallow grey and rich earthy brown. Jade seems to be staring out a window while Aradia appears to be intensely studying her own left foot. “Hey!” You prop your hands on your hips, scowling extra darkly for the intimidation factor. These vagabonds better recognize that you mean business! “Stalling won't make this any easier on you,” you warn.

The two recalibrate until you can tell they're looking at you. “We weren't trying to stall—” says Jade.

You interrupt, whipping the crop forward to point at her chest. “Likely story!” you snap. “I think you'll find I'm not gullible enough to believe that! Now, tell me everything you know.”

“We don't know anything!” Jade says.

“Caught red-handed at the scene of one of the biggest drug busts in this town since the 90s, and you're saying you didn't see _anything_ suspicious? I'll be the judge of that. Start at the top and tell me what happened.”

“Okay, well,” Jade begins, but Aradia elbows her in the arm.

“I don't think you're supposed to just _tell_ her,” she says. “You have to make her work for it.”

Your lips twist in disapproval when Aradia breaks character, but she's technically right, so you just decide that dubious fourth-wall cracking is part of her character and move on. “Think _really hard_ about what you’re about to say to me,” you prompt.

“Uhhh,” Jade says. “I changed my mind, I’m not going to tell you anything.”

It takes a lot of effort not to falter. Her practical, emotionally neutral tone and perplexed moue doesn’t really help the mood, and it’s some of the worst acting you’ve ever witnessed, even in sweeps upon sweeps of LARPing with semi-unwilling partners. Aradia picks up on your distress—even though your expression doesn’t crack, the pause gives it away, and she starts to snicker. You punish her with a quick swat to the hip, and her laughter abruptly gives way to an offended exclamation. “What was that for?”

“Mockery of the judicial system will _not_ be tolerated,” you say, emphasizing it with another swish of the crop.

“I didn’t—ow!—even say anything!”

You narrow your eyes, leaning in close enough to her face that she should be able to see through your glasses. They are good for obscuring your eyes when you want to look mysterious, but in your own opinion you are a fantastic actor and that should be appreciated by your captives. “Sometimes the worst insult lies in what _isn’t_ said,” you say, and then straighten, whipping around to turn your back on them, presenting only the view of your crossed wrists and the implement of their imminent destruction. (You take a moment to geek out because that was _so slick_.) “Now, I’ve been, according to my estimation, _extremely_ generous with you so far, but I’m going to warn you not to expect that to continue, should you persist in being uncooperative. Tell me what I wish to know, _or_ —” you spin back around, wielding the crop like you would your cane, jabbing it at the space between them. “—I will be forced to take… measures.”

“Measures,” Jade repeats slowly.

“She’s going to torture us!” Aradia says, full of false enthusiasm and falser fear. You appreciate her energy but make a mental note to give her some pointers on delivery later.

Jade’s eyes grow artificially wide. “Ohhhhh,” she says, exaggerated and drawn out. “No, not torture!”

“Oh yes,” you say, leering dangerously. “I’m giving you one last chance to give in. I’d advise you not to underestimate me.”

“You’ll never make us talk!” cries Aradia, grinning as she leans toward you in challenge. The bookshelf teeters in response and Jade jams her shoulders back against it and everyone looks very scared for a second.

“... I believe you’ll find that your bonds are the highest quality alloy that the empire can manufacture. Not even the strongest psionics could break through these restraints.” You assume Jade would facepalm if she could, but Aradia just bites her lip in an attempt not to laugh again. You reward her for her effort by turning your attention to Jade. “Would you like to go first, Miss Jade “Dogbite” Harley! Ah, I see you’re shocked that I know your name. You’d be surprised what else I know about you! Money laundering, meth labs, trafficking of rare, toxic metals, obviously for nefarious purposes. Potential connection to terrorist organizations? Yes, Miss Dogbite, my team of expert hackers is investigating your background _as we speak_ —”

“ _Dogbite?_ Oh my God, that’s horrible! I haven’t been part dog in at least five years!” Jade exclaims, cutting you off in the middle of a sentence.

You allow yourself to frown at her, irked beyond belief. Bad acting you can tolerate. Reluctance you can work around. Being interrupted… “Fine,” you say, placid. “Jade “Dogbreath” Harley. Now where were we?”

Jade’s exasperated howl cuts off abruptly when a door opens somewhere down the hall. You weren’t too thorough with investigating the whereabouts of _all_ of your hivemates before springing the news of your machinations on the chosen two, so the potential for being walked in on was not exactly a calculated risk. “Oh, my. Well, don’t let me intrude on your fun,” Kanaya says, while in the process of intruding.

“I’m conducting a very important interrogation right now—” you begin.

“Kanaya!” exclaims Aradia, tugging again at her bonds. “You should rescue us! We’re trapped.”

“They’re criminals,” you say as justification.

“Yes,” Aradia agrees. “And Kanaya is our undercover ally, here to spring us from your torture cell just in the nick of time!”

“Am I, now.” She’s at the windowsill, a silver pot in her hand. She’s pouring water from the narrow spout over a series of small plants lining the edge. Between Kanaya and Jade’s obsessive gardening and Rose’s enabling, this place is chock full of various types of plantlife. It reminds you of your treehive, in both a good way and a bad way. “I don’t know if I can commit to any spontaneous rescue missions. I might just be a humble gardener whom you mistook for your friend, getting your hopes up only to be dashed into despair.” She pauses. “Am I doing this right?”

“She called me Dogbreath,” Jade complains.

You roll your eyes. “It’s her gang name.”

“That’s a terrible gang name,” Kanaya says. “It doesn’t fit her personality at all.”

“The point isn’t to be fashionable,” you insist, “It’s to sound intimidating.”

“It doesn’t sound intimidating,” Kanaya says.

You fold your arms over your chest. “The gardener is permitted to leave, now.”

Kanaya cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, she is, is she?” She sets down her watering can next to her flowerpots, and saunters a few steps closer to you. The good part about being blind is that you don’t have to look up to anyone. The bad part is that you still have to tilt your head in order to smell them properly, and Kanaya is a fair bit taller than you. At risk of glaring at her ribcage, you set your jaw and scowl up at her as she inquires, “What if she isn’t inclined to leave?”

“She is,” you say forcefully. “She’s leaving. Right now. She sees nothing wrong here; just an officer doing her civic duty and taking a couple of dirty, wanted criminals to task.”

“I’m not dirty,” Aradia says, looking over at Jade, who shrugs. At least she admits to it, you think viciously.

“Why do you have a hoofbeast riding crop?” Kanaya wonders, wandering closer. “Aren’t police officers supposed to have those black clubs?”

Your nose scrunches. “You can’t interrogate someone with a nightstick. It is an instrument of brutality and this project requires _finesse_.”

“Finesse, as in tying someone to an easily upturned bookshelf? _Two_ someones, at that.”

“An officer is resourceful and makes do with what is available to them!”

“Of course,” she says. “Why don’t you have a gun?”

The whole ‘gun’ thing did occur to you at the time, but you elected against obtaining one, even if you could have just borrowed one of Jade’s. You find firearms dishonest and unheroic. “I’m blind,” you say instead. “Entrusting me with a firearm would be irresponsible.”

Kanaya huffs a short laugh. “How did I not guess that?” she wonders, and smoothly approaches your captives. You make a noise of protest and wield your crop threateningly (you are suddenly much less confident in its intimidation factor than you were a moment ago) but before you can intervene Kanaya pulls what smells like one of Rose’s quills out from behind a book and uses the sharp edge to sever the rope tie that took you half an hour to execute properly, freeing your prisoners in the process. “Oops,” says Kanaya.

“Jailbreak!” Aradia crows, and suddenly you are bowled over by a flashing pillow to the snout. Aradia’s powers have way less precision than psionics, and you’ve found that unless it’s an actual fistful of psychic energy rocketing toward your face, it’s actually fairly easy to shrug off her attempts at live action puppetry. Inanimate objects, though…

With the help of the pillow she pins your hands over your head, just long enough for Jade to whisk away your crop and free her wrists from your loops. (You regret making the cuffs adjustable, now.) You writhe like an eel to escape them, but Aradia blasts the rope off her wrists and gets you by the elbows, all but sitting directly on your thorax—which you’d rather she didn’t, because you might be resilient but Aradia is quite a force to be reckoned with. She is a massive, beautiful planet and you are a tiny, tiny asteroid who is very cunning and resourceful but being ‘strong for your size’ only goes so far when up against a psychic fucking powerhouse. You aren’t as weak as Rose—aren’t weak _at all_ , actually—but when your competition includes a rainbow drinker and Jade “Brick Wall” Harley it’s easy to forget what it’s like to win during hand-to-hand scuffles.

… You should have used Brick-Wall instead of Dogbite. That sounds _way_ cooler. 

Jade binds your wrists with your own rope and you almost find poetic irony in the situation except Vriska is not here and she’s the one who would truly make the metaphor shine. You’re quick, though, and manage to jerk the rope from her fingers, dragging the frayed tail as you attempt to squirm out from under Aradia without resorting to actually headbutting her in the face. You succeed in shimmying away from the prison of her legs, only to be stopped when you run out of rope. Aradia is revealed to have used your escape to distract you from the fact that she was double knotting the end of the rope around the leg of the wrought iron coffee table. It lacks the precision of your knots, but it doesn’t really need them. Lord English himself couldn’t blast that knot out of existence.

You refuse to whine in confused defeat. You don’t show any signs of weakness, other than the whole ‘being tied up thing.’ You can still escape this. You can salvage the situation. This happens in movies all the time, and the cop always wins! You just have to knock over the table and then you can—

Aradia sits down on the coffee table, folding her legs beneath her and grinning at you.

Okay. Well. That blows your chances of escape. You’ll die here before managing to lift an entire metal table _and_ Aradia.

The hat you’re wearing, which after all the struggle is still on your dome only by virtue of being held in place by your horns, slides free of said horns, and the rope jerks at your wrists when you reach for it, protesting. Aradia plucks it out of the air and sets it on her puffy mass of wild hair and thick horns, which obviously are not going to fit through the tiny holes you made for your own. It looks so ridiculous on her and you are so incredibly offended. “Okay fine,” you say, scowling at her. “Your gardener trick worked, but I am far from being defeated! As the saying goes, one who wins the battle does not necessarily win the—!”

You yelp. While focused so intently on Aradia’s attempts at subduing you, you managed to forget that Jade was the one who liberated your crop.

Your ass is reminded of this fact, very very abruptly.

“We’re going to be doing the talking now,” Aradia says smugly. Off to the side, you can hear Kanaya laughing, and you turn to stick your tongue out at her. This is all her fault, anyway. You resolve to get revenge at the nearest possible opportunity. “The only thing you should be doing is begging for mercy.”

“ _Yeah!_ ” adds Jade.

“First thing’s first,” continues Aradia, interlocking her fingers and setting them under her chin so she looks like a supervillain while she inspects you. You wait for the sentence to continue, but Aradia’s face has gone painfully blank, like she’s thinking really hard and not coming up with anything. You’d offer suggestions, but you’re kind of the one in captivity here, and that seems pretty counterproductive.

Kanaya clears her throat. “Might I make a suggestion?” Oh, no. Kanaya watching is fine, but she has a hidden sadistic streak worse than Rose’s, which you consider to be on par with yours. All five of you have a certain taste for chaos that you share, though Jade is more about actual explosions and death-defying excitement over setting up delicate interpersonal chemical reactions and watching the ensuing pandemonium. Aradia isn’t really mean about wanting to see the world burn, just desensitized, but Kanaya…

It’s not really _difficult_ to grasp why the member of your group most reliable in the ‘sawing awful people in half with a chainsaw’ department might deserve to be regarded with a little caution.

Of course, if you know to fear Kanaya’s input, Aradia definitely knows well enough to accept it wholeheartedly. “Go ahead!”

Like a scorpion descending to devour prey, Kanaya bends her knees so she’s almost level with you, but not quite. “It’s hardly appropriate that you ladies have been stripped bare while the dethroned Officer Pyrope is still in uniform, don’t you think?”

Damn it. “Hmm,” muses Aradia. “You have a point!”

Jade bends down at Kanaya’s side, plucking at your uniform even as you try to scramble away. It’s not that you have a problem with being naked, but this uniform was _expensive_. You aren’t exactly hurting for money, but at the same time law school isn’t cheap, and neither are accurate reproductions of career-specific clothing items and so you would really prefer this one not be destroyed. “I see that you’re attempting to level the playing field, and I can respect that,” you say, swallowing as you inch away from Kanaya’s claws and Jade’s prying fingers while knowing there’s no escape if Aradia just decides to rend the cloth from your body. “But let’s not forget who’s in power here—”

“Us,” says Jade. “That would be us.”

“Yes,” you allow, “But when I inevitably escape and/or am rescued and/or die and am revived by the forces of good in the world, you won’t want me to be angry at you for destroying my uniform on top of everything else you’re doing.”

Humming contemplatively, Jade reaches for your front and— starts undoing the buttons. Yes, okay, buttons you can deal with. You make a point not to look _too_ relieved lest they decide this punishment isn’t severe enough, which you don’t put past either of your fellow trolls. She gets the outer, button-up shirt open and pushes it up your arms as far as it’ll go, about to your elbows before the issue of your bonds impedes any further progress. Jade runs her hands back down your arms to your chest, covered only by the tight, insulating undershirt. She looks thoughtful as she strokes the textured fabric, down the cage of your ribs and over your abdomen, before grabbing two large handfuls of fabric just above your hipbones and ripping it from hem to collar.

You find yourself caught in the hellish space between despair and admiration as the split sides of the shirt fall unobtrusively, baring your rumblespheres. Sucking in a breath, you murmur, “ _Well_. That was certainly—”

Jade pushes a hand over your mouth. “Shhhhh,” she instructs. “Stop talking.” You have no doubt that if either of your shirts were removable at the moment, you’d be gagged with one of them. This option doesn’t exclude your underwear, which still is a very real threat. Jade pulls back and moves on to your pants and then another set of slim hands starts fiddling with your boots and you pick up the aroma of devious jade green as Kanaya removes your shoes. You don’t wear socks, so at least you don’t have to worry about being gagged with those.

“Oh, is this yours?” You hear Aradia’s voice but aren’t sure what she’s referring to, until the table creaks under her shifting weight and you hear the shuff of fabric, which you take to mean she’s found your bag of toys. “Were you planning on using these on us?” Yes, yes you were. But you were ordered not to speak, so you avoid incriminating yourself and instead attempt to look as innocent as possible. 

Kanaya has to finish divesting you of your pants because Jade abandons the venture in order to join Aradia in looking through your ‘torture implements.’ You catch a whiff of Kanaya’s smirk and risk making a face at her while your former prisoners, now captors, are distracted. She says nothing; only yanks your pants the last few inches down your ankles.

You hear buzzing. A worried (but definitely not unintrigued) noise slips past your lips, and you flex your wrists against your bonds. “—supposed to go on your…?” Jade is asking.

“Yeah, but I don’t know exactly how it works,” Aradia says.

They must be talking about the vibrating bulge ring. You really regret including that in the bag. Really, really regret. You didn’t even buy it yourself, it was given to you by someone who won it for free from a giveaway raffle at some convention somewhere and you really hope they aren’t planning on test driving it on you. “Hey, Terezi, how does this thing even work?” You have been forbidden from speaking. Conveniently. 

“Hey!” That’s Jade’s voice, but judging from the angle at which the crop smacks against your side, you’re assuming no one was actually touching it when it hit you.

“Holy fuck,” you say, “Not over my _bones_. What the hell are you guys trying to do, actually break me?” It probably won’t bruise but your ribs sting where the blow landed. You feel justified in assuming that they don’t have the kind of research that you do under their belts, but you are pretty sure they know better than to perform impact play over bony areas.

“Oops,” Aradia says. “Sorry! That was my fault.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” you say reflexively, because you’re very used to being on the other end of these encounters, and you feel loved when Kanaya’s slap is deliberately gentle. You’ve been slapped by Kanaya before, in earnest, and it was nothing like this little flutterbug kiss, almost entirely sound with absolutely no pain.

“I think someone doesn't fully understand what is supposed to be happening here,” Kanaya observes, petting your cheek in apology. “Let’s elucidate, shall we?”

You lose your underwear after that, but are not gagged with it as you were anticipating—especially as it would have been deserved, considering your last infraction involved speaking out of line again. You blink at them in question, getting only the sound of Aradia rustling through your goody bag in response. “Yes?” you prompt, squirming with anticipation. (Your nook is getting wet and it’s dripping down your buttcrack and you have no power to reorient yourself in order to make that stop happening, which is partially arousing but mostly just _really annoying_. At least the floor isn’t carpeted.)

They still haven’t told you what’s going on, but at this point hands start touching you; Jade’s at your thorax, running around and under the miniscule swell of your spheres and over the much more prominent pattern of your ribcage; Kanaya’s tracing around your hips and thighs, but not dipping in toward your nook just yet.

It continues like this for a while; all three of them are silent and you dare not speak, letting them get you warmed up with teasing touches and light scratches and the occasional smack here and there. Only when your breath is coming quicker and it would take little more than a brush of contact against your nook to coax your bulge from its sheathe does one of them speak: Aradia, whose hands were notably absent from the affair. “Since you don’t seem to be able to hold your tongue—” (you don’t protest that you _have_ been holding your tongue) “—it seems we have no choice but to let you talk.” Wait, what? “So you’re going to tell us _exactly_ what to do to you.”

She beams so wide you can smell it. You lick your lips.

“Starting with this.” The buzzing starts up again. Shit.

“Um,” you say, and Kanaya’s fingers finally introduce themselves to the outer lips of your nook, her thumb rubbing entreatingly against your sheathe. You are left momentarily speechless, despite your instructions, by your bulge slipping out the first few agonizing inches. 

“Go ahead,” Jade encourages, pinching at the tip of one of your spheres. You arch, whining. Kanaya’s tongue presses to the swollen opening of your sheathe, licking the seam around your bulge just enough that it emerges the rest of the way. She pulls away before it can reach for her, not paying you any more attention. You whine again, and Kanaya swats you.

Fuck. “You’re supposed to.” You swallow, then lick your lips. “Stretch it open. And then, um. Slide it. Down, around the base.” Nervous has never felt so awesome, but fuck are you still pretty goddamn nervous.

To her credit, when Aradia slides off the coffee table, sensuous and full of intent, everything about her is careful, especially when she strokes your spasming bulge like she’s charming a snake. Someone else’s hand helps guide you through the loop, and you feel the soft, stretchy silicone glance the wet membrane as Aradia brings it all the way to your sheathe before letting it tighten around you.

You lose your breath. “Does it hurt?” Jade asks cautiously.

“No,” you answer, hating yourself for being honest.

“Oh,” Aradia chirps, “Good!” And then she turns it on and it sounds like you’re sobbing when you buck hard off the floor because you think she rammed it up to full power immediately and the table actually drags a few inches when you writhe and Aradia must use her powers to lower the intensity because for a hot, agonizing second you were too feral to subdue. It recedes enough that it’s still driving you crazy but not running you _completely hiveshit_ and you swear at them but you think you’re going to be okay. “Soooo, what exactly is the point of this thing?”

A frustrated sound creaks in your chest. They don’t even _know?_ “For human bulges it’s supposed to prevent ejaculation,” you explain around a series of pitchy gasps, “But for trolls it’s just…” You trail off.

“Torture?” suggests Kanaya. You nod, whimpering. 

“Awesome,” says Aradia. She cautiously turns it to the next higher setting, and when you don’t spontaneously combust, leaves you alone. You’re making unabashedly desperate noises but she kisses the tip of your snout and runs a finger down your horn. “What should we do next?”

“Oh my fuck,” you spit, baring your teeth. “It’s not _my_ job to decide!”

“Well, no, it _wasn’t_. But you want to run the show, Terezi, so you had better troll up and do it! I mean, if you don’t want to, we could just leave you here...” 

You shake your head vehemently. Damn her, damn her, fuck, you have to think of something but it’s way harder to improvise when your bulge is about to rattle off. You don’t think you’ve ever even felt vibrations on your bulge before that weren’t just traveling from your nook. “Um,” you say, and then, “Shit.” Think of something, anything, fuck— “Put me on my knees,” you say, almost phrasing it like a question except you momentarily forget how human language tones are supposed to work.

There’s a chorus of approving sounds, and Aradia says, “Good idea!” and then pulls on your hair to rouse you. It’s very superficial and gentle; you all know how to use safewords and everything but none of them would actually cause you pain unless you’d specifically asked for it. They are aware, to some level, that you go a bit harder than the rest of them (except perhaps Rose, depending on the day) and so occasionally indulge you, even when they aren’t entirely sure what they’re doing. You appreciate it, even if it fucking sucks.

Rolling off your back and getting up to your hands and knees is something of a Trial, because not only do you have ropes to deal with, but your shirts are still clinging to your arms, and to make matters worse you jump and jerk every time your thrashing bulge runs into something, be it your thigh, stomach, or the vibrator itself. They help you a bit—mostly Jade, because she’s nice—until you’re prostrate with your tangled-up wrists held in front of you and your thighs spread as wide as you can get them to keep from accidentally squeezing your hypersensitive bulge. Someone touches your nook, infuriatingly soft, and you cry out the entire time it’s happening but cry even louder when they stop.

“What next?” someone asks, you don’t really register who. You’re out of ideas, though, twitching and trembling and face-first against the ground, only making soft noises as the bulge ring continues to thrum steadily against you. You’re also kind of embarrassed, not familiar with traveling this far into subspace or being this intensely dominated.

Jade seems to recognize first that they need to back off, which is why Jade is your favourite, although you trust any of them to not blast past your boundaries hard enough to actually fuck you up. “How about this,” she says, getting up on her knees in front of you and giving your hair a guiding tug. You lift your nose enough to smell her, specifically the wet musk of her nook. You shift your center of gravity, adjusting while you try to remember how to use your tongue. It’s not exactly a difficult thing to remember, and Jade is sweet when you make the first contact, tremulously teasing. 

Off to the side Aradia giggles, and you jump as your modified hat slides snugly back down around your horns. “Time to do your civic duty, Officer Pyrope,” she says, and despite the encouraging sound of their laughter, you make a point to suppress your smile with the taste of Jade’s skin.


	5. jade ;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What else is a girl to do, when people are too much and outside is overstimulating, but to pinch a tent in her own backyard and play hookey for the rest of the Saturday?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _well, maybe too many cooks will spoil the broth, but they’ll fill our hearts with so much love._
> 
> (i'm so sorry.)

It’s at least half an hour before you get out of your truck, though you don’t know exactly because you’re not watching the clock. You breathe in, breathe out, do all the exercises Rose taught you, and you still feel like you’re about to puke up your guts. The lights are on in the house, even though dusk isn’t for a few hours. Aradia sometimes forgets to turn them off, even though it annoys the shit out of Rose and Kanaya, who prefer natural light and dimmer spaces. Terezi doesn’t need illumination for obvious reasons, but you’ve caught her deliberately flipping lightswitches on when she leaves a room, just to piss the other two off.

Normally the antics of your friends would make you smile, but right now you just feel sick and scared. Your house is usually so alive and thriving and welcoming, but right now it looks ominous and overwhelming and you just don’t think you can go inside and face them all right now.

It’s a Saturday, and this morning you’d gotten up early, planning on running to the lab for just a couple hours. What happened at the lab was not exactly routine, and the chaotic noontime traffic that had you prematurely pulling out of the drive-thru just to avoid the wait and still kept you from home for an additional hour didn’t help. You nearly got pulled over, too, because a cop was looking for a truck and yours matched the description, but upon realizing your plate didn’t match, he sent you on your way.

You are a nervous wreck and you are absolutely done with being around people for right now.

Knowing you can’t hide out in your truck all day, you force yourself to open the door and climb out. Instead of walking to the front door, though, you swerve wide, going around the outside of the house to a narrow path that leads to the gate to your backyard. You push through, hurrying past the greenhouse and the garden to the shed, because your property might have five bedrooms, a greenhouse, and half an acre of land, but it somehow manages to still not have a garage. It makes car wrangling a bitch in winter, but you usually just set up a network of tarps blocking off your entire driveway and that usually helps with the snow.

The technology in this new earth isn’t as expansive as you’re used to. You suppose that when everyone was trying to remember what ‘earth’ was, you remembered details like cotton candy and fifty different kinds of root vegetable, but forgot cookalizers and sylladexes. (You miss sylladexes the most, to be honest.) So many _really obvious_ things don’t exist anymore, because they were just so obvious that no one thought to prioritize that detail when creating a planet out of three-year-old memories.

You can’t believe, for example, that the trolls managed to import rainbow drinker romance novels, but not sopor slime.

There’s a lot of junk in here, enough that you’ve been considering just building another shed entirely, maybe one like twice the size of this one. You could put it farther back on the property so that you and Kanaya could expand your garden even further but not have to walk so far to get supplies, which is why you hadn’t expanded the garden already. That, and Terezi’s been strongly petitioning for a built-in pool. You haven’t managed to explain to her how expensive those are, much less how much time it would take to build, as she seems to think you are made of creative potential. It’s not that she’s wrong, you just don’t want to do it.

Although having a pool so close by does sound really tempting, which is why you’ve left the space open for so long to give yourself time to think about it. It would be like having the ocean outside your door again, except not at all, but at least you wouldn’t have to go all the way down to the city rec center or the nearest river when you wanted to swim.

You muse on thoughts of those big hotel pools that have the little cut out sections with hot tubs in them until you finally locate what you’ve been searching for, and drag it out into the open. As you were going on about before, the technology here is slightly more limited than what you had growing up, but when you walk a few meters into the unoccupied grassy space of your backyard and set up the toolbox-sized unit on the ground, the large metal frame that pops up is still pretty impressive. Back on your island the tent would have popped up fully assembled, but you don’t mind hauling out the canvas and fitting it to the frame on your own.

It takes a while but at least you don’t have to ask for help to get it set up, and twenty minutes later you have a tent in your yard in the middle of an afternoon on a Saturday. When it’s finished you find you still don’t want to go inside, so you trudge back to your truck and grab the emergency satchel from the back seat. It’s got blankets and a pillow and some snacks and one of your five back-up laptops in it. (You can never have too many spare computers.)

You set up shop with a lukewarm water bottle, some beef jerky and a pack of dried fruit. The laptop is charged but you don’t turn it on; you leave it in the backpack while you spread out on the blanket and stare at the ceiling of the tent and just

The laptop remains untouched. You don’t count the hours, and you turn off your cell phone after the first text notif. After a few minutes of deliberation you even shove your watch into the bag where you can’t see it.

You wash a mouthful of beef jerky down with a swig of tepid water and listen to the silence, imagining you’re back on an island surrounded by vast, isolated nothingness. Imagining you aren’t about thirty meters away from a house where you live with four other people. Four people! That’s more than all the people you knew for most of your childhood, and now that’s just the number of occupants in your _home_.

Some days you feel loved beyond belief. Other days… you still feel loved beyond belief, but also like you’re going to get hives from the overstimulation.

It’s late in the summer, so the tent is still warm and glowing even as the sun sinks lower in the sky. You let your hair fall over your face and watch shapes form on the inside of your eyelids until you hear the crunch of grass and twigs and the metallic twang of a zipper. They don’t speak, but you feel the presence of two additional bodies in the once empty space. One smells like organic shampoo and essential oils—Rose. The other… You hear something skim the ceiling of the tent, squealing along the sleek polycotton, and a soft breath of irritation. Kanaya, then.

They’ve brought with them a truly impressive amount of blankets and pillows, which is why you aren’t surprised when the discordant harmony of three different breathing patterns is broken by Aradia’s subtle ebullience. It’s at least another hour by your estimation before you hear Terezi parking her bike behind the greenhouse, and her vivacious, broad-footed steps come toward you instead of away, so you assume someone texted her a sitrep.

After five hours in the tent, maybe even six, you realize you haven’t heard a single spoken word since bidding a shaky goodbye to the police officer, unless you count Kanaya swearing at the too-low tent ceiling. (You decide not to, for the novelty.) The time alone was good for calming your nerves, but as the morning’s stressors fade in your memory, you feel extremely grateful for the company.

You finally open your eyes to observe your friends. The only sound for some time has been Terezi typing on her laptop, maybe writing a paper or chatting with someone. Rose and Kanaya are reading from the same book and passing notes to each other on Rose’s cell phone, and Aradia has a sketchbook page full of clumsy doodles. They’re all stretched out like indulgent cats, buried in their tasks like they appreciate the ability to steep in silence as much as you do. You don’t want to talk just yet, not wanting to violate the rare, precious space, but you get up and stretch. A few glances are tossed in your direction—Rose’s lingers more than the others, and you catch her eyes and share a small smile before you shimmy over on hands and knees to look at Aradia’s sketches.

She flips to a new page and you spend a while passing the pencil back and forth, wordlessly collaborating on drawings and communicating only through pictures and scribbled notes. You go until your body feels wound-up and tense and you jot down a quick ‘brb!’ before slipping out of the tent and into the cooling evening air.

After being locked in a tent for so long, the fresh air feels _incredible_ , and you break the silence with a whoop of joy and throw yourself into the grass, rolling down a very shallow incline. You realize you’ve been wearing your boots this entire time, and your long-sleeved lab shirt, too. You kick off the boots and tug at the shirt simultaneously, succeeded in getting your arm tangled and hair in your mouth and only one boot off before your head gets stuck halfway out. Abandoning the other boot, you focus on freeing your torso before attacking the other boot, then you toe off your socks and leave them in the grass as you sprawl in just your skirt and thin tank-top.

The tent zipper opens, an upward sliding pitch, and then closes with the low _schwoom_ of an ending song; fingers sliding down the frets. You stay flat on your back and stare up at the sky. Rose is delicate and poised as she sits herself next to you, leaning her weight back on one arm. “Feeling better?” she asks, cautious as she avoids looking directly at you.

“Yes,” you say, and your voice croaks a little but you know you got enough of what you needed because it feels _so good_ to talk again. You roll on your side, curling around Rose’s knees and putting your head in her lap. “How are you?”

“It was a good way to spend a Saturday evening,” Rose says ambiguously, but she brings her free hand up to play with the long mess of your hair, plucking out a crumpled leaf, and then a broken blade of grass, the kind that gives you slivers when you try to pull it. “Are you hungry? I made food.”

“I had some stuff,” you say, though you’ll probably want to eat later. You haven’t decided when you’ll go inside, or even if you will.

“Astronaut rations?” Rose enquires, raising a pale eyebrow.

You giggle. “A lady should _always_ be prepared for impromptu space visits!”  
  
“I still can’t believe you spent four dollars on a single dried ice cream sandwich.”

“But they taste _really good_ ,” you insist.  
  
Rose pulls something else from your hair, saying, “So do real ice cream sandwiches, which you could get in a box of eight for the same price, if not a little less.” Rose was the only one smart enough to conjure herself a bank account, so you don’t know why she’s whining about money. You aren’t doing too bad either, after selling all the advanced technological junk your sylladex ejected around you when it stopped existing. It turns out you had some pretty valuable stuff just hanging around in there, being ignored for years on end!

There was also a bunch of just legit garbage but that happens when you upgrade your sylladex to the point where you stop needing to think about what you’re cramming in there anymore.

You _really_ miss your sylladex!

“Whatever,” you laugh, and roll onto your back so you can look up at her face. Rose is slow to turn her gaze down at you, but when she does her smile is soft and fond and makes the things inside your chest flutter a lot and you are so incredibly glad that this girl is your friend, even if she pesters you about buying expensive freeze-dried food instead of the regular kinds. Rose pets your cheek and down your neck, fingertips swirling over your sternum and you stretch out over her lap like a big dog, arms above your head and a contented noise in your throat. “I was thinking about looking into building that pool Terezi’s been wanting,” you say. Rose hums a questioning note, tilting her head to the side. “I thought we could install one with a fancy hot tub in the corner, like a spa resort in our own backyard.”  
  
“That’s a lot of commitment to one property,” Rose observes.

It’s your turn to tilt your head, though maybe less delicately than Rose does and more like the doofy upside-down hairy person that you are. “What do you mean?”  
  
She hums again, a little less serenely this time. “Well,” she begins. “We’ve been living here for about three years, and we’ve definitely done some interesting things to the space, but nothing permanent and nothing that can’t be undone should we decide to leave.”

“Leave?” you ask, slightly alarmed as you sit up. “Rose, are you thinking of moving out?”  
  
“Not quite,” she says, touching your arm reassuringly. “I was just wondering.”  
  
“Wondering _what?_ ” you demand, not exactly loving how hard it can be to pry straightforward information out of her sometimes.

“Permanence,” she says, which isn’t quite an answer to your question. You raise your eyebrows at her until she sighs, finally elaborating. “How long will this last? Is this just a flirtation with the youthful freedom we never had, or is this something we intend to continue indefinitely? I try to estimate what the future holds for each of us, but even my own feelings are wildly convoluted, so I can’t hope to speak for anyone else on the matter. Not with any kind of confidence, anyway.” Your mouth wobbles, but you lean down to press your cheek against her shoulder, hoping to encourage her to keep sharing her feelings. “I think about everything we’ve experienced so far, and everything left to experience in this world. Even if it’s not the same as the one we lost, even if it might be, dare I say it, _boring_ compared to the majesty of our planets in the game…

“Even so, we are barely into our third decade of life, although it feels like we’ve lived so much more. Are we ready to set down roots so soon? If we stay here are we rushing into a decision for the rest of our lives?” She pauses. “I do not want to limit myself, and yet the other night I was looking into mortgage rates for the house.”

You laugh a little, because it sounds so ridiculously _adult_. You’ve lived years of videogame concepts and the very bounds of evolving technology, that hearing something as mundane as _mortgaging a home_ come from Rose’s lips seems more absurd than fraymotifs and boondollars. “Aradia and I travel a lot,” you say, figuring it a good time to step in. “We’ve been a lot of places, and we plan on seeing a lot more.” You let it the sentiment hang, and then suggest, gently, “You should go outside more.”  
  
“I go outside,” Rose says as she usually does, but the tone is different. More sad, a bit wistful.  
  
“We’re going to Mongolia next,” you say. You nuzzle your forehead against her temple. “You could come with us. It might give you some new ideas for your writing.”

“I don’t even speak Mongolian,” she murmurs.

You kiss her cheek. “We can learn. We’ll make Terezi and Kanaya do it, too.” Terezi’s already fluent in Arabic and working on Spanish, so you don’t see why adding one more language would be a problem.

“Are we going to settle down and become boring?” Rose asks abruptly.

Blinking, you consider the implications of such a question. “I don’t think you can describe our current living situation as _boring_ ,” you hedge, and are happy to see her smile at that.

“What if we get tired of it? What if we secretly desire to be monogamous heterosexual housewives with four young children and lye stains on our hands?”  
  
This time your laughter is loud and indelicate, bursting through your every seam with all the gross, rapturous sounds a body can produce. “What if that?” you repeat, and then change your mind, rephrasing: “So _what?_ Maybe that’s what we’ll turn into in ten years, and maybe we’ll stay exactly the same as we are now! Maybe Terezi will give up her law career and become a Catholic nun! Who knows? Our future isn’t foreshadowed by clouds anymore, Rose,” you say, wrapping your palms around her cheeks. “Nothing’s making the decisions for us anymore. Not paradox space, not fate or statistical inevitability, not some dumbass game that’s trying its best to make sure we fail horribly and lose everything we care about. If our minds are going to change in the future, there’s no point in being miserable _now_ while waiting for that to happen.”

There are crickets out, and the first flickers of firefly light are starting to blip romantic lines of morse code through the growing pitch of night. Rose looks thoughtful, but you see the hint of acceptance, an afterthought of peace. Her cheeks are round and smooth and you’re leaning in to kiss her when she interrupts, asking, “But is that enough to justify building an entire pool _and_ a hot tub?”

You grin. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”  
  
Rose shrugs and her black lips curve to match your own. “If nothing else, it should add to the house’s resale value.”

You’re laughing when your mouth presses to hers, warm and joyful. Rose might be worried, and she might even have a good reason to be worried, but all you know is that you love your friends more than anything and wouldn’t regret this lasting forever. If it doesn’t, you know you’ll survive, and you hope you’ll stay close even if you all go your separate ways, but you aren’t going to make a point to plan for it.

You aren’t planning for anything anymore, aside from maybe a new shed and a built-in pool. Your kisses hide smiles and giggles, your hands pawing with adoration. Rose’s lipstick is smudged when you part, and you use your discarded lab shirt to clean her chin. “Let’s go back inside,” she says.

“The house?” you ask, reluctant.  
  
“No. The tent, of course.”

Hand-in-hand, you cross the few feet back to the tent, which unzips before you get there. Terezi pokes her angular nose out, announcing, “I was worried you’d gotten kidnapped. We were about to send out a search party.” You tackle her backwards into the tent, straddling her hips as you kiss her. She seems surprised but not displeased, and keeps a hand wrapped around the thin strap of your tank as she draws you further into the tent, clearing the space for Rose.

“I’ll be right back,” Rose announces, leaving the tent door unzipped when she goes. That’s how you get bugs, you think admonishingly, but your mouth is too busy to complain. You make noises until both Aradia and Kanaya come close enough for you to kiss them, too, although you don’t remove yourself from Terezi’s person. It proves useful when Aradia and Kanaya’s mouths meet and you dip down to kiss Terezi again. It’s not long before Terezi flips you over, getting you on your back in the middle of the tent with three trolls swanning around you, methodically shedding clothing and exchanging hot-and-cold kisses, familiar hands tracing familiar curves.

By the time Rose returns, everything is gone but your sports bra, Aradia’s t-shirt, and the slip Kanaya was wearing under her dress. Terezi managed to get everything off in one go, and so is getting a bit more attention due to the absence of boundaries. “I see I wasn’t fast enough for you four,” she observes, but her face is clean of smeared make-up and she’s wearing a robe instead of her earlier outfit, so you don’t think she has any right to complain.

There’s something bulging in the pocket of her robe, something you regard with curiosity before Aradia gets rid of the shirt and your attention is drawn to the broad curves of her breasts and the round shape of her hips and tummy. Both Terezi and Kanaya help to pry you out of your thick sports bra, which is great for support but also probably sturdy enough to support the weight of three full grown adults. You want nothing more than to bury your face in Aradia’s plushy grey-suede softness but your tongue is only glancing the full shape of one of her spheres when Rose slips free of her robe and is not entirely naked underneath.

With so many bulges in the house, the strap-on doesn’t really see as much action as a penetrative toy in a house full of sexually involved women otherwise might, but it’s always great fun when it does come out. You enjoy it no matter who’s on what end, but with the way Rose is looking at you it’s obvious that you’re tonight’s winner.

You still want to put your face in Aradia’s chest, though, and proceed to do so after you shoot Rose a winning smile.

By the time you’re finished indulging yourself and are splayed out once more on your back, surrounded by some of your greatest friends, Kanaya has managed to divest herself of the slip and Rose has finagled the dildo into the O-ring. You have some fun ones, but tonight’s selection is pretty simple. It’s perfectly sized and shaped for your anatomy, the silicone coloured a custom pink and green mix that one might rather liberally describe as ‘rose’ and ‘jade.’ You don’t know if Rose meant it to be sentimental or as one of her weird passive aggressive digs when she gifted it to you, but you’ve always really appreciated it.

Rose kneels before you and uncaps the lube bottle, but it’s your hand that reaches forward to pump up and down the shaft of the toy, getting it nice and slick. You meet her eyes the entire time, not breaking your gaze even when you stretch back and flatten your hand to smear the excess lube between your legs.

You prop yourself up on your shoulders while Rose gets into position, but you drop fast when the first stroke pushes inside you. While your love of bulges is hard to devalue, there’s something you still crave about hard and fast, your whole body rocking under powerful thrusts, each one driving the firm head of the toy into your g-spot. Rose picks up speed easily but doesn’t immediately rush into fucking your brains into scrambled egg, each rock of her hips measured and marked with careful control.

Although you’d like to see her lose herself you let it be, declining to ask for more when you reach for the bulge nearest to you. The slim, jade muscle tangles with your fingers, and Kanaya sighs from her position wrapped halfway around your head, threading her fingers through your hair. Rose dips to kiss your collarbone as your bodies rock together. You tug a strand of Aradia’s hair so that she brings her bulge into grabbing range.

She’s sitting crosslegged with three fingers up Terezi’s nook—Terezi who is being loud and indecorous about it as usual—but sighs and touches your wrist with her other hand regardless, her eyes fluttering closed.

You smile, and breathe a particularly enthusiastic moan when Rose seems to have gotten her fill of ‘steady and tender’ and wraps her hands about your hips and takes you hard enough that you’re glad that bulges are mostly self sufficient, because your hands work as little more than elaborate counterpoints when you’re being pounded so hard you can’t even _breathe_ , much less focus enough to jack something off.

The pace is brutal enough on the receiving end, and Rose has to stop to gasp into your shoulder, her skin lined with a thin layer of sweat. You lick the crook of her neck but your hands are way too busy to be doing any soothing petting. Kanaya reaches over your head and strokes her hair for you, which you appreciate.

If someone had told you today would end with your whole house inside a tent creating some horrorterror tangle of limbs… you probably would have believed them, let’s not kid around, but you enjoy the surprise all the same.

Rose takes up the mantle again after the short break, but she tires pretty quickly before you encourage her to stop, accompanied by a joke that you’re going to make her go to the gym with you. She laughs dryly like she thinks you’re joking, which you are not. Maybe you can build a small running track around the pool and make her jog with you every morning (unlikely, but maybe just once a _week_ ).

She pulls out, and you all take a moment to reconfigure, and things get a _lot_ more interesting after that.

While you all have sex fairly regularly, actual straight-up orgies with all five of you are surprisingly rare—mostly due to schedule conflicts rather than lack of interest. You plan to enjoy it to its full extent, which is how you end up half on your side, body tworked at an interesting angle so you can fit both Kanaya and Terezi’s bulges inside you while fitting your face between Rose’s legs. Rose, in turn, is lapping languidly at Aradia’s bulge while the troll rides her rocking fingers (all four of them at once, because Aradia goes ridiculously hard). It’s just complicated enough to be nearly _un_ sexy for all the work and awkward contortion it requires, but you’re having fun anyway, even if you think this would be much more fulfilling if it was being recorded for someone to enjoy without the added spinal discomfort.

Getting five people off turns out to be A Task, and even though you are amused by the daisy chain, you eventually relinquish your mouth’s claim on Rose’s vulva, leaving a parting kiss before you reorient yourself into a less painful position and wrap an arm around Terezi’s neck so she can lick the taste of Rose’s fluids from your mouth.

Being double-stuffed with alien tentacle dick is an incredibly rewarding experience and you focus on that entirely, a leg thrown over Terezi’s bony hip to give the girls more room to work. You have to worm a hand down to rub at your own clit because even two bulges aren’t quite brutal enough for you, but it’s not long after before you orgasm, open-mouthed gasping as you ride out the convulsions.

They both pull out to give you a moment—Terezi disappearing entirely, but Kanaya smears her sweaty hair into a rough estimation of ‘order’ and waits a few more seconds before you’re ready to have something inside you again. You’re too tired to do much but lay there and pet her horn (the safe one, where you don’t run a risk of accidentally stabbing yourself) and coo, but she doesn’t seem to mind. You work up to a slower, second orgasm, taking your time and enjoying the sensations of powerful muscle writhing inside you when a head falls on your shoulder. You blink in a second of confusion before you recognize pale hair and lavender eyes and see Rose laying in the opposite direction from you, smiling like a minx with her own troll between her legs.

It’s not the best arrangement for kissing but you do plenty of nuzzling in between as your respective ladies take you both over the edge, until you hear the first splash of troll cum and have the faint presence of mind to hope it doesn’t stain the tent or anything before Rose digs the back of her skull into your shoulder and fists her hand in your hair and you come a second time, filled with heavy, bone-deep satisfaction.

Rose drags herself about a foot forward until she can drop down to rest her head on your hip, bare and sweaty and gazing up at you with the corners of her lips curled up in satisfaction. In the background you hear Terezi making fun of Kanaya and Aradia for not being able to hold in their slurry before she’s manhandled into a pile of pillows and taught another lesson in manners.

“Still thinking about that pool?” Rose asks, her voice sultry and scratchy and tired, but in all the best ways.

You stroke your hand down the smooth line of her hip, chuckling absently. “I think so, yeah,” you say, giving her butt an affectionate squeeze.

“Good. Because I think I’m more than willing to stay here for the next chapter or so of our lives.”

Your smile broadens. “I’m glad to hear that, Rose. I’m going to put a running track around the pool.”  
  
“On second thought,” Rose says, “You can leave me in Mongolia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks. Hope you enjoyed.


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